Popular Song by Pele deLappe, lithograph, 1935.

Part II

(In last week’s Part I, a 15 year old San Franciscan Pele deLappe found herself in Woodstock in the early 1930s, befriended by Diego and Frida Rivera, Arnold and Lucille Blanch. She studied at The Art Students League in New York, where she first encountered lithography, and came under the influence of the great American scene painter, Reginald Marsh, while becoming immersed in the artist’s life.)

The year after Pele’s second summer in Woodstock, she would send off a poet friend, Edwin Rolfe to the Abe Lincoln Brigade to fight fascist Franco in Spain, recalling, “Rolfe’s poem, ‘City of Anguish,’ about the bombing of Madrid, brought tears to the eyes of Ernest Hemingway.” She danced the jitterbug with her Lefty pals in Harlem’s Renaissance, winning the friendship of Jazz greats Sidney Bechet and Willy the Lion Smith, who performed for and courted her at “The Log Cabin” (as would at least one of them, under cozier circumstances.)

Soon re-united with friends Frida and Diego Rivera, Pele assisted in creating the ill-fated mural at Rockefeller Center, washing brushes and posing for one of the figures, “hanging on every word of Diego and Ben Shahn, one of his assistants.” After Nelson Rockefeller had the mural torn down for the fact it included Lenin, a slightly less outspoken radical entered Pele’s world — “the second” of three great Latin muralists, David Siqueiros.

“Night after night in Child’s Restaurant he hypnotized me and a group of young devotees with his graphic descriptions of revolutionary and collective art work…David once knocked on my door around 3 a.m. to take me to what he considered a marvelous venue for murals, Pennsylvania Station. He magnanimously offered me an alcove of my very own. But the great artist as lover program was proving to be a chimera — I was better off doing my own thing.”

Pele’s apprenticeship — never as explicit in word as in graphic rendering — didn’t reach its crescendo until, at the ripe age of 17, she accompanied the Blanches (both of whom had won Guggenheims) and their painter friends Russell and Doris Lee, to Europe. We’ve seen it before in the story of Andrew Dasburg and we see it again, here. Woodstock painter pairs traveling abroad disintegrating into Italian farce wherein husbands abandon wives for other husband’s wives, great art is swallowed whole (hopefully to inspire personal triumph), horrendous physical calamity is narrowly averted, as, all the while a sort of tipsy naïveté prevails to preserve our “decadents abroad” from a world going to hell in a beerhall and — not least of all — from themselves. Making it all sound simple as arithmetic, Pele would later write:

“It was Arnold’s clever plan to have Lucile and me spend a month each in Germany and Italy while he and Doris Lee went to Spain as lovers. Russell Lee, Doris’ husband, acquiesced in the arrangement by heading for the Soviet Union. The domestic mess would be sorted out when we returned to the States.”

And so it was just “before the deluge” of Nazism sweeping Europe, Lucile and Pele sketch their way through bars and cafes serving Nazi Brownshirts. Pele had a drawing torn from her hands (“I’d shave my head to have preserved!”) and ripped to pieces by a disapproving Nazi model, exclaiming, “This does not happen in Germany!” Spent entire days in Munich’s Medical Museum, where the women drew “tattooed jars in heads, carefully shellacked hermaphrodite genitalia, human brains in formaldehyde. One brain, we were told, was Beethoven’s…” What had clearly become a remarkable friendship accompanied even more remarkable images filling sketchbooks (their whereabouts today, unknown) of “the beautiful, the ugly, the living, and the dead.”

Traveling on-the-cheap by tram and train down the Italian continent, knowing even less about Fascism than they did of Nazism (blessedly little) the odd couple of woman painters marveled almost as much at the food as at the frescoes, as…

Interview of Peter Bogdanovich by Annie Nocenti in Kleinert/James Gallery. (photo by Alan Carey)

Andres Mudge’s The Forgotten Kingdom, a tale of reconnection in South Africa was presented with The Maverick Award for Best Feature Narrative at the 14th annual Woodstock Film Festival Awards Gala that was held Saturday, October 5 at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston. The festival, which ran from October 2-October 6 in venues in Woodstock, Kingston, Rhinebeck, Saugerties and Rosendale, included panels, concerts, events and parties and 24 world premier films and some 130 films in all.

Director of The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, Peter Bogdanovich received the Honorary Maverick Lifetime Achievement Award and filmmaker and activist Mira Nair, whose features include Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay! was given the The Meera Gandhi Giving Back Award.

The star studded cast of the festival included Vera Farmiga, Andy Garcia, Stephen Dorff, Liz Garbus, Leon Gast, Bill Plympton, Joe Berlinger, Nancy Savoca.

Other awards included American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, directed by Grace Lee, as Best Feature Documentary; Daniel Sousa’s Feral was given the Maverick Aware for Best Animation; The Diane Seligman Award for Best Short Narrative was presented to The Earth, the Way I Left It, directed by Jeff Pinilla; Best Student Short Film was presented to Above The Sea, directed by Keola Racela; Best Short Documentary was presented to Poustinia, directed by Kristian Berg; The Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography was presented to The Forgotten Kingdom, cinematography by Carlos Carvalho.

The Audiences saw things similarly. Its Award for Narrative Feature also went to Mudge’s The Forgotten Kingdom directed by Andrew. The Audience Award for Documentary Feature was a tie between American Revolutionary: The Evolution Of Grace Lee Boggs directed by Grace Lee and Magical Universe directed by Jeremy Workman.

The Festival opened with a packed house at the Woodstock Playhouse for Beyond The Notes, a documentary about jazz saxophone legend Sonny Rollins, followed by a Q&A with Rollins, and finished with Ass Backwards, directed by Chris Nelson and produced by Woodstocker Elysa Dutton.

The Festival has already set its dates for next year’s 15 th Annual event. It will be October 1-5, 2014. See live.woodstockfilmfestival.com for photos from the 14th annual Maverick Awards Gala as well as the 2013 festival events.

Many in the area know Robbie Leaver. For years he and his wife Blair lived in West Shokan. He’s written screenplays with Olive-based filmmaker Larry Fesenden and shown his own short works in the Woodstock Film Festival. He’s shown art in local galleries. He’s played music at local venues…and is one of those thoughtful folks who’s also deeply funny. He now lives in Greene County…and writes.

Earlier this month he started crawling the length of Broadway in the New York City borough of Manhattan…or at least a long stretch of it from the Customs House, down in the Wall Street District, to his apartment way uptown in the 160s.

“I imagine if you don’t live in Manhattan crawling up Broadway could seem sort of self destructive. It’s true, I could get vomited on, or kicked in the face, or spit on,” he noted in his first crawling day’s blog. “An insane homeless man limps by me now with bare torn up feet, muttering to himself, stabbing at the air with his hand. He might jump on my back and try to ride me. I see construction workers who look sort of drunk on the sidewalk smoking and spitting and cat calling at passing women. What will they say when I crawl by? Then again maybe the person who is dangerous is the one who is crawling.”

He reports conversations before he starts.

“What about your wife and son, man, what do they think? Is this a cry for help? Why are you doing this?” Leaver reports a friend asking him.

“I’m crawling so you don’t have to, I tell him,” is his reply. “This is an offering. A loving gesture to my fellow man! My sense of why I’m crawling flickers in and out of sight inside my head. Can something be profound and pathetic all at once? Of all the things I could be doing with my time. This is lame. Shame. Penance. Punishment. Blah blah blah.”

Leaver’s crawling outfit’s a slightly-too-large blue pinstripe suit inherited from his father, kneepads, work boots and work gloves he uses for building stone walls up in the Catskills. He realizes, and examines in his blog, the art-world connotations of what he’s doing…but also something deeper that’s at play; something his ten year old seems to get when father and son talk before one goes off to school and the other leaves to write, and crawl, for the day.

“I haven’t crawled more than a few feet since I was a baby, back before I could walk. Back before I could walk…That’s where I’m going,” Leaver observes. “A young cop leans down into my vision and his voice is genuinely nice and concerned, ‘What are you doin?’ ‘Personal project,’ I say, like it’s nothing to worry about. I keep moving. I’ve got it under control. ‘Okay.” He says and that’s it. He disappears. I was going to say ‘private challenge’ I think that might have worked too.”

Already, as he crawls on days he can find a wing man to help him and chart his progress, he’s questioning whether he can make it the whole way he’s planned. Some — including myself — have offered to crawl with him for stretches. The world he’s seeing on all fours is fresh and different, invigorating even.

“Zucotti Park is all yellow leaves on trees strung with party lights. What do I Occupy? Maybe I’m a sign that says things are really starting to fall apart. The end is nigh. I imagine someone going home and saying when they saw a guy crawling in the rain, that’s when they knew things were really fucked,” he writes. “Some teenage kids move alongside me. They look like the kind of kids that get loud and nasty and scare people on the train. The kids ask me questions and some film with their phones and tell people on the phone about what they are seeing. I am not prepared for how gentle they are towards me…because I am below them? They seem stumped, amused and sympathetic.”

This is a novel in action, it seems, and performance art of the highest order, where it draws to the surface inner dreamlives and deep human questions.

“Someone says, ’He’s making a movie,’ writes Robbie Leaver, writer, artist, father, crawler. “A construction worker yells down, ‘What are you crawling for?!’ I yell back, ‘I’m crawling for you!’”

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

“The Jews were massacred, the Gypsies humiliated and persecuted, the Arabs exterminated, the Moriscos (converted Arabs) expelled, and the Andalucians generally exploited…if we do not relate the music…to brutality, repression, hunger, fear, menace, inferiority, resistance, and secrecy, then we shall not find the reality of cante flamenco…it is a storm of exasperation and grief.”
–Historian Felix Grande, writing about the origins of flamenco in 15th- to 17th-century Spain

“Flamenco is one of the most visceral forms of art that speaks about the human condition,” said Martín Santangelo, director of Noche Flamenca. The company of musicians and dancers will bring their talents to a nine-day residency at Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Tivoli, culminating in public performances on Saturday, November 30, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, December 1, at 2:30 p.m.

With a Jewish father from Philadelphia and maternal grandparents from Spain and Argentina, Santangelo’s ancestry reflects some of the influences that combined to inspire flamenco. He was born in New York City and moved to Madrid in the 1980s to study flamenco. There he met and married Soledad Barrio, who became Noche Flamenca’s lead dancer. In the past year, they have relocated to New York City, which has become their base of operations for performance and touring.

Flamenco is a product of Andalucia, a region of southern Spain, where the Renaissance brought a pinnacle of achievements in science, literature, poetry, music, and dance, in a mingling of 27 different cultures. “It was a moment of heightened enlightenment,” explained Santangelo, “that degenerated quickly because of the Inquisition. What remained was the essence of these cultures, which formed the flamenco.”

The basis of flamenco is song, with a variety of traditional forms: siguiriya, soleare, alegria, martinete, jaleo, and more, each with its own complex rhythm and mode of expression. “When a singer had a song,” said Santangelo, “a musician would accompany the song, and then dancing came much later. The guitar now accompanies both singers and dancers.”

Formerly a dancer, Santangelo now takes the role of director and sometimes choreographer, adapting traditional melodies to themes he is drawn to, then molding song, accompaniment, and dance to heighten the impact. The program to be performed at Kaatsbaan is entitled Sombras Sagradas, or Sacred Shadows. “It’s about things that have shadowed me, protected or not protected me, lived inside of me,” said the director.

Among the pieces are “Esta Noche No Es Mi Dia (This Night is not My Day),” a tribute to a flamenco singer he worked with for many years, now dead. A new piece, “El Cazador,” is based on a Chekhov short story, “The Huntsman,” that has haunted Santangelo for 30 years. He describes “Siguiriya,” a solo by Barrio, as “a tragic dance about death, about how we are alone in life, and about accepting it.”

Santangelo and Barrio have performed in the Woodstock area before, when they used to come to visit artist Mary Frank and occasionally gave shows at the Byrdcliffe Theater. Nicole Bernhardt was growing up in Bearsville at that point, studying with the grande dame of local flamenco, Maraquita Flores, who was “80, four foot eight, and fierce,” according to Bernhardt. Flores is now 98 and living in Virginia, and Bernhardt is still passionate about flamenco. She facilitated the Noche Flamenca residency, hoping that Kaatsbaan might help to generate a flamenco community.

Weekly flamenco classes, for both adults and children, are already being taught by Kati Garcia-Renart at the not-for-profit center. Bernhardt said Garcia-Renart also teaches at an annual flamenco festival in New Mexico, where for two weeks “they eat, drink, and sleep flamenco — sounds like heaven to me!”

One of Kaatsbaan’s missions is the encouragement of dance communities through its activities on the 153-acre east-of-the-Hudson property formerly owned by Eleanor Roosevelt’s grandparents. Founded and run by former American Ballet Theater dancers, the center features dance studios and accommodations in the renovated buildings that include a barn designed by architect Stanford White. Kaatsbaan brings dancers of many styles from all over the world to create, rehearse, and perform on its rural campus.

Noche Flamenca presents Sombras Sagradas at Kaatsbaan International Dance Center on Saturday, November 30, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, December 1, at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $30 for general reserved seating, $45 for cafe table seating. For reservations and information, call 845-757-5106 x10. For information on Monday evening flamenco classes at Kaatsbaan, see http://www.kaatsbaan.org/. Kaatsbaan is located at 120 Broadway in Tivoli.

Barbara Pickhardt and Johanna Hall. (photo by Catherine Sebastian)

It’s by no means a revisionist version of the Nativity, but when Ars Choralis performs Miracle in Bethlehem, an opera composed by Barbara Pickhardt with lyrics by Johanna Hall, audiences may be surprised by the vividness of such characters as Herod, the Magi, the innkeeper, and an invented but entirely appropriate innkeeper’s wife. “The story has taken on a new life, and yet the story that we read in Luke and Matthew is all there,” said Pickhardt.

“It’s a ‘popera,’” said Hall, “written in the style of opera, but the melodies are so accessible.”

The production will premiere at Overlook Methodist Church in Woodstock on Saturday, December 7, at 7 p.m., with another show on Sunday, December 8, at 4 p.m. It’s been ten years in the making, a labor of love for chorus director Pickhardt and pop lyricist Hall, who wrote the words to such hits as “Still the One” and “Dance with Me” by Orleans and “Half Moon,” the B side of Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee.”

The merging of two widely different musical backgrounds makes for a dynamic creative mix that could have been awkward, but Pickhardt said, “Working with Johanna is a pleasure and an honor. It always works between us.”

Hall, known primarily as a songwriter and music critic, has had a theatrical bent since childhood. “I am the daughter of a drama critic,” she said. “I grew up going to theater and knowing all the Broadway shows and standards. At the end of his life, my father only loved opera. He would be so pleased. Having the opportunity to do a long-form story like this is a lifelong dream for me.”

Her career began in the sixties, when, as rock critic for the Village Voice, she was, she reported, “the only critic in America who did not pan Janis Joplin when she left Big Brother.” A friendship with Joplin resulted, and Johanna and her husband, John Hall, wrote “Half Moon” at Joplin’s request.

The Halls moved to Woodstock when Bob Dylan, Todd Rundgren, and other luminaries were generating a strong local rock music community. John put Orleans together, and Johanna became the band’s “word lady,” supplying lyrics for several hits. The couple’s songs were recorded by Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Millie Jackson, Chaka Khan, and other pop stars.

In recent years, Johanna wrote about music for Woodstock Times. She also became a member of Ars Choralis, the Hudson Valley chorus whose repertoire ranges from classical to modern, with a consistently spiritual bent, whether expressed through Christian masterworks or through programs on subjects such as American slavery or the women’s orchestra of Birkenau during the Holocaust. The group has performed throughout the local area and at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, as well as in Europe.

Jeremy Adams

The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild — now calling itself Byrdcliffe at Woodstock — announced the hiring this past week of New York arts administrator Jeremy Adams, a British-born resident of Lomontville, near Stone Ridge, as its new executive director starting January 2.

Adams, with degrees from Kingston College and the University of Winchester in England, and Pratt University here, has served as Executive Director of the CUE Art Foundation in New York’s Chelsea art district for the past decade, where he was responsible for creating and growing programming, liaising with board members, increasing awareness of the organization, and raising the funds necessary to help the organization expand and provide more services to serve its mission fostering emerging arts talents in the midst of the Manhattan art market.

“We are delighted that Jeremy will be the new Executive Director of Byrdcliffe. Jeremy is a leader who can build on Byrdcliffe’s legacy, manage the organization effectively, and help Byrdcliffe achieve its full potential as a magnet for artists and a center of creative and economic vitality for our entire region,” said Henry T. Ford, chair of the Byrdcliffe board of directors in a press release this week. “We were looking for someone with a passionate commitment to Byrdcliffe’s mission as a vibrant arts and crafts colony; management experience in successfully running a non-profit organization — including strong planning, financial, fundraising, and communication skills; and an ability to work collaboratively with all of the constituencies that are important to Byrdcliffe’s success. We have found that person in Jeremy Adams.”

Adams will take over from Matthew Leaycraft, a former Guild board member who stepped up as interim director, and then worked as executive director to stabilize the venerable organization’s finances and programming, following an aborted new hire of a New York City arts administrator that lasted a summer following longstanding director Carla Smith’s retirement.

Smith passed away earlier this year. Leaycraft has moved to New York to pursue his calling as an ordained minister.

While at CUE — which puts on exhibitions, runs professional development programming, maintains studio residencies, and provides arts education — Adams nearly doubled the organization’s revenue by targeting and cultivating relationships with foundations, individuals and government grant-makers, as well as increasing earned income. In addition, he helped create a consortium of 24 visual arts organizations offering professional development programming for artists in the Tri-State area and was named one of the nation’s top 20 leaders in the Visual Arts non-profit sector.

“It is truly an honor to be invited to join such a well respected colony as Byrdcliffe,” said Adams, who still works as an artist while raising a young family, in the same press release. “I am looking forward to collaborating with all the stakeholders in Woodstock’s dynamic cultural community; together, we will continue to grow the organization and provide thoughtful programming that meets the needs of such an artistically sophisticated audience, as well as increase national awareness of the cultural importance of the region as a whole.”

He is expected to be on hand at the opening of the organization’s annual 5×7 fundraising art exhibition at the Kleinert/James Arts Center this Friday evening, December 6.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

It’s a complex wall at this point, the mash up of bits and pieces on the wall of the old Laundromat on Library Lane, which is pegged to come down in the coming year to be replaced by a sparkling new community-oriented Woodstock Library Annex. There’s tattering remnants of what look like old posters and other historical artifacts, until close inspection shows they’re all a spoof, albeit without any bad intent. Plus a growing number of large-scale doodlings, colorful additions, art posters and found materials that lend added beauty to what’s been morphing for a year, with considerable new activity in recent weeks.

Seeming to hold it all together is a No Trespassing notice from the Ulster County Sherriff’s office.

“That No Trespass sign was there first, from back when the building was seized for back taxes,” noted Library Director Amy Raff this week. “I never took it off because I liked it.”

The rest of the stuff has evolved, she added. First, Friends of Library member Michael Hunt, an artist with a penchant for poster media, started the series of faux posters and artifacts he calls “You’re In The Midst of It” over a year ago. Then someone “art bombed” the laundromat wall a year ago.

“I didn’t care; I thought it was cool,” Raff added. “Some people went to the artist who did the bombing and suggested it would be good for them to contact the library…and I gave them my blessing to continue.”

Anonymity was requested…part of the guerilla art ethos at play on the wall for the past year. But that has led many in town to start looking at some of Woodstock’s higher profile conceptual artists as suspects. After all, pop up art, both in terms of instantaneous galleries and high concept guerrilla art actions, has become something of a trend around Woodstock in recent years…at least as long as there are spaces awaiting new tenants, or rehabbing. Remember all the pieces around the Green over recent summers, yard bombing, or Will Lytle’s first cartoon books appearing here and there without forewarning or publicity of any kind?

Suffice it to say that the artist who’s been adorning and setting off Hunt’s calls “You’re In The Midst of It” pieces on the soon-to-be Woodstock Library Annex site, on this old wooden Laundromat wall, is not your usual suspect. But it’s someone who many will say “ah” to if and when they “come out.”

In the meantime, enjoy what’s transpiring…and remember those times when you or others have had the joy of transforming a soon-to-be-painted wall with scribbled notes, tic-tac-toe games, and drawings in a home. And when getting by to see this fun display, heed Raff’s beckoning call to stop in next door for warmth and some possible gift purchases of the Post Shelf Workshop pieces on sale this week…all made of reprocessed library materials. Think wreaths concocted from old books, ornaments, or a “bookmobile” sculpture made up o — what else — small books.

“We are an artists’ colony after all,” Raff summarized. “And this is temporary, like all things. I love that it’s become multi-layered. And most of all, that the artist who’s been doing it is inspired by what the Annex will be. That’s special.”

New Guild director Jeremy Adams at the 5×7 show. (photo by Dion Ogust)

“My vision for Byrdcliffe at Woodstock is currently very broad,” writes Brydcliffe’s new, incoming executive director, Jeremy Adams. “I need to get in there, get the lay of the land, meet as many people as possible connected to the organization, and also as many people from the community, to get a clearer idea of where the organization is currently situated and where it can go.”

Adams, hired in the past month after an extensive search that started in late summer after Matthew Leaycraft, who had come on as director on an interim basis three years ago, was formerly director at New York’s prestigious and pioneering CUE Foundation for emerging artists. He starts work Thursday, January 2.

Leaycraft came on after the Woodstock Guild board of directors hired a nonprofit New York gallery founder to replace Carla Smith, who retired after over a decade in the position. That replacement, Peter Nesbit, lasted only a matter of weeks and left leaving a trail of charges against the Byrdcliffe board and town’s cultural scene.

“For me, the long term goal for Byrdcliffe at Woodstock is to remain true to its origins — to be a utopian enclave for creative activity, and to be a leading light in the nation’s cultural activity,” Adams noted last week. “I believe that all forms of artistic expression should be given equal respect and equal merit. I want it to be a place where artists of all types come to explore their oeuvre, meet other creative individuals, take part in a cross pollination of ideas, and not be afraid to fail gloriously in pursuit of furthering their artistic practice. It should be a hub of creative activity and creative discourse.”

Adams, who has been living part-time in Lomontville and has two children, went on to address the community in which he will now be a leading light.

“The area has an extremely rich cultural history, and the community is very sophisticated. I believe these are two important aspects to consider as I begin a new journey at the organization,” he said. ‘I want to create a level playing field for all forms of artistic expression, one where all the arts and all the crafts receive mutual respect, while bringing in a diverse array of artistic events that can enrich what is already happening in the area. An organization that has been in existence for 111 years is going to have a very rich history, however I am new to Byrdcliffe and would like to feel that I am coming in with a clean slate and have no agenda beyond helping add to the cultural vitality of the area. I will welcome as much engagement from the community as I can, I intend to operate with as much transparency as possible, will welcome conversations from a broad range of constituents as I want make sure Byrdcliffe is seen as an inclusive and welcoming organization. I want to collaborate with as many organizations as possible in the Hudson Valley to make our area one of the most exciting places to live or to visit.”

Adams has an undergraduate degree in Fine Art Painting from a college in his native England and came to the U.S. in 1989 to get an MFA in painting at Pratt Institute; he is a practicing artist.

“I continued to paint for many years but when my kids were born and I got to run my first organization at CUE, I simply didn’t have the time to continue my practice. So I am currently not making work,” he added. “Now that my kids are a little older, though, I intend to convert part of my garage back into a studio so I can satisfy that part of me. I do brew my own beer, keep bees, and am now just embarking on learning the banjo, all three of which I see as creative activities.”

Over the years since his Pratt graduation in 1991, Adams worked in a variety of jobs in the arts, in commercial galleries and also as an assistant to artists…all of which he feels will fuel his contributions to Byrdcliffe, Woodstock and the region.

“I have realized I greatly enjoy working with artists, helping them in their daily practice and in realizing their goals so I found myself drawn to the non-profit world as that allowed me to focus on artists and the making of art as opposed to being concerned about the selling of the work,” he said. “I have two kids, Stella who is ten, and Felix who is eight. They are greatly enjoying rural life, and their new school at High Meadow in Stone Ridge. My wife grew up summering in the area as her best friend’s family had, and still has, a house in Shady. When we had our first child we decided to summer up in the area and rented various houses. We fell in love with the region and about four years ago purchased our home in Lomontville. Like many people, we originally thought that spending weekends and summers in the area would give us a healthy dose of rural life and leave us satisfied. The opposite happened, we found ourselves increasingly trying to spend more and more time here as we greatly enjoyed the quality of life, realized that the region had much to offer culturally, and simply felt connected to everything about the area.”

As for the new work he starts this week, Adams was optimistic and enthused.

“I have met everyone connected to Byrdcliffe and am very impressed by their commitment to helping grow the organization,” he noted. “I think this is a very exciting time for the organization, and I hope I can be a part of its success for many years to come.”

Bolton Brown, The Bather, 1921, Lithograph on paper, 14 x 17.5 inches, Collection of Morgan Anderson Consulting.

Woodstock as we know it begins with Bolton Brown (1866-1934), a prodigy whose gifts brought him fame, before ego accompanying these ripped them away again. He was an art instructor at 19, arguably the first great mountain climber in America (as well as pioneer of notations and adventure-writing documenting such); a draftsman without peer, masterful painter and extraordinary teacher of painting; a builder, designer and architect, and a father of modern lithography (with more than 60 technical breakthroughs and several books on such to his credit); a lecturer, author, memoirist and “survivor of modernism.” Brown’s accomplishments are particularly astounding for the fact that he remains a marginalized figure today, even if such “shoddy treatment” by history is largely the consequence of a singularly tempestuous and uncompromising nature.

Locally, a fair amount of attention has been paid over the years, of course, to “the discoverer of modern Woodstock” and — if you look for it — fascinating material on and by Brown is not hard to find. We are extremely lucky, however, that the Woodstock Guild’s Derin Tanyol has brought her own mountain-climbing mastery to bear in curating a new synthesis of Brown’s accomplishments, since prior to Bolton Brown: Strength and Solitude (January 17-February 23, with an Opening Reception, 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, January 18 at the Kleinert/James Arts Center, 34 Tinker Street, Woodstock) a proper appreciation of Brown’s cross-blend of art, writings, and advancements in climbing have been studied in relation to one another only at a cursory level.

Photographer unknown, Bolton Brown drawing The Bowl, 1925. Private collection.

Born in 1866 in Syracuse, into the large family of a Presbyterian minister (with whom BB battled his whole life long), Brown credits his mother as his first art teacher. He received a Master’s degree in painting in 1891, then traveled to California, accepting an invitation to create The Fine Art Department for the newly-established Stanford University — a position he held for ten years, before being fired in a typically heated controversy.

The widow of Stanford’s founder had become outraged that a nude model was being used in co-educational art classes. First Brown was asked to separate male from female students, and then to abolish the use of a nude model altogether. During the ensuing battle Brown wrote contemptuously of, “the foolish idea that the visible body is primarily a sexual excitant,” when he contrarily argued that, “it is simply the home of the soul.” He also defended himself grandly with the claim, “To the best of my knowledge and belief, I am now the best teacher of art in the United States. This is not a boast — but a judgment.”

During the Stanford years (climbing often with his new wife, Lucy) Brown was credited with first ascents of some the highest, most formidable Sierra peaks including those he named Mount Ericsson, Arrow Peak, Mount Gardiner, Mount Stanford, and — in honor of his hero — Mount Ruskin. His solo barefoot ascent of Mount King involved previously unseen lassoes, nooses, harnesses and knots, and has been called, “the finest Sierra Climb of the nineteenth century.”

Immersed in the writings of naturalist philosopher John Ruskin, Bolton Brown’s complex personality seemed to require both that he be heralded as hero (which his writings in the Sierra Club Bulletin certainly accomplished) and yet to simultaneously “disappear” into nature, establishing a nothing-less-than spiritual connection which, in the end, conquered the conqueror. Such dual ambition would inspire many of Brown’s most memorable artistic achievements, and, ironically (due to the immense popularity of climbing), provide him the potential for a contemporary renaissance after the near total eclipse of his reputation in the last century.

The confidence and “cool” of the climber did not leave Brown upon his dismissal from Stanford. He built a beautiful home and, to support his growing family, became a dealer of Japanese prints, buying such right off the docks of San Francisco. It is almost certainly under this pretext he first visited the home of Ralph Whitehead, an immensely wealthy Englishman, who’d studied with Ruskin in Oxford, whose American socialite wife, Jane Byrd McCall, shared his philosophic views (biting the industrialist hand supplying their fortune), and who, together, first attempted in miniature, a Ruskin-based art colony on the California coast. After it floundered, Whitehead came to rely upon two young Americans to help supply him the verve and nerve to try again. Eventually Mr. Brown negotiated three times the salary first offered him and, ever the pioneer, set out to personally explore the Catskill Mountains of his native New York State, since these (he argued to Whitehead and his “poet” companion, Hervey White) better conformed with the requirements for an arts and crafts community as laid down by Ruskin, himself.

In an article (which should be read by every high school student in Ulster County) famously quoted in Alf Evers’ Woodstock, The History of an American Town, Brown, later in life, recalled the formative days of the Byrdcliffe artists colony, when he first arrived “by stage [coach]…in Windham” and hence “scrambled over summits so wild it seemed no man or even animal could ever have been there.” Following only a topographical map of the Catskills he sought an exact altitude recommended by Ruskin. On a particular day in the spring of 1902 Brown explored “a high pocket with steep walls, in its bottom a single farm.” This was Mink Hollow. Finding Cooper Lake at the southern entrance of this cul de sac and with “The day still being young…[he] walked up the back side of Overlook, emerging into a notch at Mead’s Mountain House.”

Now Brown — never shy of a grand-eloquence — recalls, “Exactly here the story of modern Woodstock really begins, for it was just at this moment and from this place that I, like Balboa from his ‘peak in Darien’ first saw my South Sea. South indeed it was and wide and almost as blue as the sea, that extraordinarily beautiful view, amazing in extent, the silver Hudson losing itself in the remote haze.” It was an “old man…Mr. Mead himself” who, after Brown clambered over a stone wall to speak with him and asked, “What is the name of that place down there?” answered, “That is Woodstock Village.” “It looked good to me then…” wrote Brown, and then, with rare understatement, “it has not ceased to do so.”

Whitehead and White were convinced to give up their own explorations near Asheville, North Carolina and, once Whitehead was convinced that Woodstock teamed with no secret community of Jews, he agreed, “Well, all right; let’s have it here.”

(Photo by Sarite Sanders)

He who knows the secret of sounds, knows the mystery of the whole universe.–Hazrat Inayat Khan

If you are as prone to anxiety and racing thoughts as I am, relaxation can be tricky. That’s why I was lucky, at the end of a week sky-high with stress, to interview Baird Hersey, whose overtone choral group, Prana, is performing at Mountain View Studio in Woodstock on Saturday, February 8. I went home from the interview with medicine — a copy of Prana’s new CD, entitled Sadhana, and Hersey’s book, The Practice of Nada Yoga: Meditation on the Inner Sacred Sound, just published by Inner Traditions and scheduled for a book-signing event at Mirabai Books, also on February 8.

Thus equipped, I spent most of a snowed-in Saturday focused on mental therapy, immersing myself in the complex, ethereal vocal harmonies of Prana, reading about the ancient practice of sound yoga, and experimenting with the simple listening exercises Hersey outlines in his book. Try it. It’s a lot cheaper than drugs.

Prana’s music is meant to induce a meditative state, said Hersey. The nine-member group, founded in 2000, represents the latest stage in his long and distinguished musical career, spanning jazz, world music, electronic music, arrangements for television, and a detailed exploration of overtone singing. Derived from vocal practices of Tibetans, Mongolians, Tuvans of Siberia, and other ancient cultures, overtone singing allows the singer to produce two pitches simultaneously by manipulating the shapes of the throat and the mouth.

Like many vibrations in nature, the two tones produced are in a relationship known as a harmonic, consisting of pitches occurring at mathematically perfect intervals. In Western music, explained Hersey, we have slightly altered the intervals so that when we change keys, all the notes will sound “in tune.” When the brain hears this slight discrepancy, it unconsciously works to correct the imperfection of the intervals. The intervals of the harmonics, however, require no adjustment, and the mind is free to simply sink into the sounds, evoking a meditative experience. Even if you’re not interested in meditation, the music can calm you right down.

But Hersey is definitely interested in meditation, as well as in other spiritual practices. He has been doing hatha yoga since 1988 and the athletic form known as ashtanga yoga since 1998. In recent years, Prana has been performing with Krishna Das, a master of kirtan, or yogic chanting, who sings on the final piece of the new CD. The record’s title, Sadhana, is a Sanskrit word that means “practice.”

“The album is set up in the form of a spiritual practice,” said Hersey. “It starts with drums, then an invocation, and then it settles down. Each piece looks at a different aspect of the world and how we relate to it. The practice ends with a closing prayer, and then there’s the piece with Krishna Das, representing the worldly state at the other end of the practice.”

Except for “My Foolish Heart,” the Krishna Das song, performed at a slow pace, with a yearning, rock-n-roll timbre, there are no lyrics in English on the CD. A few pieces incorporate Sanskrit chanting, and there’s a good bit of overtone singing. The compositions are based on various traditions — Western choral music and styles of India, Tibet, Mongolia, Tuva, Russian Georgia, Bulgaria. The expansive, rolling harmonies are intoned by the impeccable voices of Prana’s nine members: Peter Buettner, Renee Finkelstein, Amy Fradon, Kirsti Gholson, Julie Last, Bruce Milner, Julian Lines, Joe Veillette, and Bill Ylitalo.

The group has met weekly for almost 14 years, in a process that is also a practice, said Hersey, admitting, “Sometimes it’s more like group therapy. It’s a focused singing practice.” All the members have their own professional musical careers, from Milner, a dentist who had a rock-n-roll hit in the 60s, to Fradon, who’s been performing and teaching music in Woodstock and abroad for over two decades.

As a result of Hersey’s years of musical training, his arrangements involve a sophistication and nuance that are rare in meditative music, while also expressing the depth of his devotion. “The music of Prana came out of the yoga practice,” he said. “I felt the shell around my heart had been cracked open, and this was the sound that reflected that feeling.”

Hersey’s meditations deepened when he found his way into nada yoga. He delved into ancient texts on the four levels of sound, which are described in his book, along with intriguing exercises to help us explore all four. Level one is hearing the world through the ears. Level two consists of sound memories and thoughts that are heard in the mind. At level three, sound is related to the sense of vision, a concept that made sense to Hersey, who has a condition known as synesthesia, or mixing of senses, enabling him to see sounds as shapes. Level four is the nada, the internal sacred sounds that provide a compelling focus for meditation, once one has learned to hear them.

Hersey’s book adapts the ancient methods to Western students — even those unfamiliar to yoga and meditation — with the aim of increasing awareness of sound, leading ultimately to the bliss of perceiving nada. No, I didn’t get there in my one day of practice. I enjoyed such exercises as clapping and listening for the echo off the walls of a room. I also liked focusing on one ambient sound (in my case, the furnace) and listening to subtle fluctuations in pitch, volume, duration, and repetition.

Actually, I was already making an effort to attend to environmental sounds, as a result of hearing John Cage’s “Water Music” at Bard College and then taking Karl Berger’s Gamala Taki rhythm training workshop. The work of these musicians — both of them Buddhists — fits right into the tradition of nada yoga. The exercises described in Hersey’s book sharpened my perceptions and facilitated my attempt at the first of the meditations which follow next in the sequence.

As Hersey points out, practice is an ongoing process. I hope if I keep at it, I might someday hear that high, luminescent inner sound that the yogis describe. Meanwhile, I’m listening to Prana and chilling out.

Reservations are recommended for Prana’s performance and CD launch at Mountain View Studio, 20 Mountain View Avenue in Woodstock on Saturday, February 8, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and may be reserved by emailing info@pranasound.com with “reservation” in the subject line. The book-signing for The Practice of Nada Yoga will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 8 at Mirabai Books, 23 Mill Hill Road, also in Woodstock. For more information on Baird Hersey and Prana, or to purchase books and CDs, see http://bairdhersey.com/ and http://pranasound.com/.

Anne Benson (Jolanta Photo)

It seems logical that a bookstore owner would be a writer — especially the former proprietor of Woodstock’s used bookshop, The Reader’s Quarry, where owner Anne Benson used to stock the shelves according to her fine and wide-ranging literary tastes. I was not surprised to learn that since she sold the store in 2012 to Daniel Sofaer — another quirky and well-read litterateur — Benson has been writing a novel.

When I went to her home to pick up a copy of Sailing Directions (CreateSpace, 2013), I was startled to learn what an adventurous life she has had — with plenty of grist for novel-writing. She has not spent all her time reading and selling books but has flown airplanes, worked as a chef, and sailed aboard boats in New England, the Bahamas, and Greece.

During our visit, a number of stories unreeled from Benson’s lips, such as an account of her trip to India with her second husband. A member of a Newport, Rhode Island, family of artists, artisans and stone-carvers, he took her on an art-buying expedition on behalf of an antique dealer. She described the dislocation of an American in India with astonishing precision and detail. Finally, she revealed that her husband died of a heart attack three years into the marriage, leading to the story she tells in Sailing Directions, described as “a novelized memoir of grief and recovery along the shores of Greece.”

A friend, about to take a job as a ship’s captain, convinced Benson — or Nina, as she is called in the book — to come along as the cook on a wealthy American’s 100-foot yacht, hoping it would help shake off her grief. Sunny Greece, the ocean, and Désirée, the antique wooden yacht, are supporting characters in the deftly drawn tale of life on a ship in the Mediterranean, under the thumb of a tyrannical, self-indulgent financier who wishes to be called “Boss.”

There are minor problems with the book, mainly due to a need for copyediting and proofreading — which could be done, and the book easily revised, given its print-on-demand status. While the errors are distracting, they do not diminish the storytelling skills that paint precise portraits of the heroine, the alternately supportive and contentious crew, and the Boss, amidst the language of navigation and the sea.

I know next to nothing about sailing, but I love to read about “the rumble of blocks along the mainsheet traveler,” even while having no idea what any of those terms mean. It’s easy to relate to the thrill evoked when “there’s a crack as the great sail fills with wind, and they begin to move.”

Lest we cherish a romantic image of life on a yacht, we witness Nina’s confinement for hours a day in a stifling hot galley, struggling to make gourmet meals from the scanty supplies she’s able to buy in the Greek coastal villages. Benson succeeds in conveying the sensuous qualities of food — not so much in the eating but in the preparation. My favorite line in the book is her quote from chef Alice Waters: “Cooking, preparing food, involves far more than creating a meal for family or friends: it has to do with keeping yourself intact.”

And Nina is working hard at keeping herself intact as the first anniversary of her husband Jake’s death approaches. Between her persistent grief and her demanding job, she feels like falling apart much of the time. Without heavy-handed sentiment, Benson weaves in the undercurrent of Nina’s grappling with the pain of having been widowed at the tender age of 37.

Meanwhile, she has to admit there’s an attraction between herself and the captain, Alex, Jake’s close friend. Nina and Alex tiptoe around this ticklish situation, adding a layer of suspense.

Benson does a superb juggling act, keeping all her interacting themes and tensions in the air — Nina’s grief, Alex’s allure, the Boss’s pigheadedness, the trouble with wealth, flirtatious Greek men, the art of cooking, the grit and splendor of sailing — in such a way that the reader keeps wanting to know what will happen to the cast of characters — especially the aging, graceful yacht.

Sailing Directions by Anne Benson is available on Amazon.com.

Self-portrait by Deyo.

John Kedzie Jacobs was in his 80s when he discovered, in the attic of his childhood home in Highland, a trove of letters to and from his older brother, Edward, who had died in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. For twelve years, the now 95-year-old Jacobs has been writing about the memories revived and transformed by his discovery.

He has assembled the letters, his brother’s artwork, and his own commentary in the recently published The Stranger in the Attic: Finding a Lost Brother in His Letters Home, a searching portrait of Edward and his times — the Depression, the New York City Art Students League of the 1930s, and the idealism of young Communists going off to fight Fascism. Jacobs will read from the book and sign copies at the Golden Notebook in Woodstock at 4 p.m. Saturday, February 22.

Having written a great deal about my ancestors and the writings they left behind, I know how powerful it can be to learn about their personalities and try to understand how their stories — both personal and historical — feed into my own life. It’s riveting to watch Jacobs at this task, as he grapples with a lifetime of hazy, ambivalent images of his brother, suddenly expanded by the vibrant voice that appears in the letters.

Edward Deyo Jacobs was born in 1913, three years before his sister Dedi and five years before John. The two boys had a contentious relationship, augmented by Edward’s artistic, anarchic nature and John’s determination to be “a regular guy.” Their mother, Bertha Deyo, had grown up on a family farm in Gardiner, near New Paltz, then escaped to Europe, followed by Cornell University. She met Ned Jacobs, a history major at Cornell, married him, and then found herself back on the land when he bought an apple farm in Highland.

Despite their financial struggles, Ned and Bertha Jacobs managed to scrape together enough money to provide a few years of private schooling for each of their three children. From Oakwood, the Quaker boarding school in Poughkeepsie, Edward wrote, on May 1, 1928:

Dear Mother,

…I had two of my poems published in The Purple and the Gold. Come over and see me soon please. I will show you the whole bunch. The new [school] catalog has come out. I didn’t know what a fine place this is until I read it. It sure sounds great.

Interview of Peter Bogdanovich by Annie Nocenti in Kleinert/James Gallery. (photo by Alan Carey)

Andres Mudge’s The Forgotten Kingdom, a tale of reconnection in South Africa was presented with The Maverick Award for Best Feature Narrative at the 14th annual Woodstock Film Festival Awards Gala that was held Saturday, October 5 at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston. The festival, which ran from October 2-October 6 in venues in Woodstock, Kingston, Rhinebeck, Saugerties and Rosendale, included panels, concerts, events and parties and 24 world premier films and some 130 films in all.

Director of The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, Peter Bogdanovich received the Honorary Maverick Lifetime Achievement Award and filmmaker and activist Mira Nair, whose features include Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay! was given the The Meera Gandhi Giving Back Award.

The star studded cast of the festival included Vera Farmiga, Andy Garcia, Stephen Dorff, Liz Garbus, Leon Gast, Bill Plympton, Joe Berlinger, Nancy Savoca.

Other awards included American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, directed by Grace Lee, as Best Feature Documentary; Daniel Sousa’s Feral was given the Maverick Aware for Best Animation; The Diane Seligman Award for Best Short Narrative was presented to The Earth, the Way I Left It, directed by Jeff Pinilla; Best Student Short Film was presented to Above The Sea, directed by Keola Racela; Best Short Documentary was presented to Poustinia, directed by Kristian Berg; The Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography was presented to The Forgotten Kingdom, cinematography by Carlos Carvalho.

The Audiences saw things similarly. Its Award for Narrative Feature also went to Mudge’s The Forgotten Kingdom directed by Andrew. The Audience Award for Documentary Feature was a tie between American Revolutionary: The Evolution Of Grace Lee Boggs directed by Grace Lee and Magical Universe directed by Jeremy Workman.

The Festival opened with a packed house at the Woodstock Playhouse for Beyond The Notes, a documentary about jazz saxophone legend Sonny Rollins, followed by a Q&A with Rollins, and finished with Ass Backwards, directed by Chris Nelson and produced by Woodstocker Elysa Dutton.

The Festival has already set its dates for next year’s 15 th Annual event. It will be October 1-5, 2014. See live.woodstockfilmfestival.com for photos from the 14th annual Maverick Awards Gala as well as the 2013 festival events.

Paul Green directs at his Rock Academy. (photo by Dion Ogust)

Speculation about the plans for the former Zena Elementary School has run rampant ever since the Kingston City School District’s Board of Education voted to accept a $926,000 bid for the property from Zena 4 Corners two months ago. But now all parties are talking openly about the future of the school as the Woodstock Music Lab.

If all goes according to plan, the Woodstock Music Lab, a partnership between Paul Green and Michael Lang, could be open by autumn 2015 as a music school that would prepare its students for a possible career in the music industry.

“We don’t want to call it the Woodstock Music School, because it’s so much more than that,” said Green, founder of the Paul Green Rock Academy, and before that the School of Rock. “It’s going to be a business that’s one-third college-level music school, one-third artistic and technology think tank, one-third artist development hub. The focus by no means will be just rock music, but we’ll look at popular music as a whole, film scoring and writing music for television commercials. And all of our students are going to do a little bit of everything, we’re not going to have majors. Every student that walks through our doors is going to learn how to write, perform, engineer, produce, legally encapsulate and market their own music.”

It’s a concept first floated in a Woodstock Film Festival press release dated August 3, 2011, which announced his joining the festival as its music coordinator.

“Green recently moved to Woodstock and is currently working with Michael Lang, co-creator of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Festival, on the early phases of building a world renown music college right here in Woodstock,” read the final paragraph of the press release, and it turned out to be more than just an afterthought; Green said that it was one of the primary reasons he moved to the area.

“The music industry just does not develop artists anymore,” Green said. “All the new music technology, while it’s made things easier, it hasn’t necessarily made things better. I listen to the Stones or Elton John or Black Sabbath and I’d say to myself, ‘Why doesn’t music sound this way anymore?’ There’s tens of thousands of great young musicians in this country, but there isn’t a place to go to meet other young musicians.”

A great fit

Of course it all began with the closure of Zena as part of a comprehensive redistricting plan which dropped the amount of elementary schools in the district from 11 to seven over a two-year period. But even then, it took Steve and Lysbeth Kursh to help make the connection between the former elementary school’s past and its hopeful future.

“Our son goes to Woodstock Day School, and I drive by Zena all the time,” said Steve Kursh. “It just struck us that there’s a great sports field and a great gym right there, and we could use that for the Woodstock Day School, we could get this, the Day School could use it, and we could find a use for the building.”

The Kursh’s son, Garrett, is also a student at the Paul Green Rock Academy, and a conversation Steve Kursh had with Green helped put the future of Zena into even greater focus.

“(Kursh) said, I want you to come look at something,” Green said. “We both send our kids to the Woodstock Day School and lament the lack of sports fields there, so he was saying to himself, ‘If I can find a tenant for the main building, we can use the sports field for Woodstock Day School.’ And I could not believe my eyes, it was exactly what I’d been looking for, for the past year and a half. 40,000-square feet of well-maintained classroom facilities where we can build recording studios and rehearsal spaces into.”

Green said the Woodstock Music Lab might have set up shop in a former campground in High Falls if not for the sudden availability of Zena. It’s one of many fortuitous circumstances that, if things go as those involved are hoping, could almost make it seem like fate.

“I don’t think we realized how great a fit it was when we initiated this,” said Kursh. “There’s so many positives. If we tried to do anything else it wouldn’t have been the right thing.”

Pete Caigan (photo by Dion Ogust)

“This is one of my Woodstock dreams coming true,” said drummer and recording engineer Pete Caigan, who, after several years working with Jerry Marotta at the revived Dreamland Studios in West Hurley, now has filled the historic Colony Café on Rock City Road with recording equipment for use as a studio on weekdays, and will be booking local and national acts into the room come weekends. “Our beautiful town is packed with talent with no place great to showcase it. This will allow us to make records and create a launching pad for the whole scene. There’s not been anything quite like this since the Joyous Lake.”

To accommodate all he wants, Caigan’s put in a new sound system he characterizes as “amazing,” worked on making the acoustics in the tall, balcony surrounded main room more conducive to louder acts (via curtains, baffles and a host of other engineering tricks, and been working at giving the entire trapezoidal building a thorough cleaning. Along the way, he’s been finding hidden treasures and finding that the magic that first drew him to the place is growing on a daily basis.

The Manhattan-born, Bard-educated Caigan got his start learning Pro Tools for music engineering on his own, then interning with Marotta’s Jersville Studios before he got “a big opportunity” to record the bass and drums for Sarah McLachlan’s Afterglow album, which went double platinum. He opened his own studio, Flymax, then moved over to work at Dreamland. The new phase of his life started rolling towards its current shape last autumn when he asked Colony Café owner Mariann Harrigfeld, who bought the place with her late husband James 14 years ago (and whose son Jeff owns nearby Woodstock Music Shop), about possibly renting some space to record in. By December, he was working in the lounge above the front lobby; by January the talk had shifted to his leasing the whole space and booking its music, and by last month a deal was worked out.

“She’s keeping the bar business and the food service, I exclusively book the music,” Caigan said of what he and Harrigfeld worked out. “We realized we each had pieces of the puzzle and could make the place work.”

Flymax Recording, in addition to having separate recording spaces, will be able to record performances live, with state-of-the-art equipment, from the main room, which holds a maximum audience of 250.

“We can do multiple things in that room, and do it at a very high level of professionalism,” Caigan went on. “Everyone who’s seen the place is enthused, and I’m even getting top musicians in helping clean the place. They love the big working fireplace, the vibe of the room, the place’s history…”

Woodstock Chamber Orchestra.

The big classical music news this month is the return of the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra. With the demise of numerous American orchestras over the past few years, including our own Esopus Chamber Orchestra, it was re asonable to assume that once the WCO shut down operations it was gone for good. But it’s not. At a press conference in Kingston on March 31, the WCO’s president Gregory Dinger and new interim Executive Director Dana White-Marks (she plays viola, no joke) explained the difficulties that had led to suspension of the WCO’s activities. But renewed fund-raising activities, including direct approaches to every member of the Woodstock and Ulster County Chambers of Commerce, have brought in enough donations to get the orchestra back in action, and not just for one concert. “We’ve also had lots of support from ‘average people,’” White-Marks said at a press conference on March 31.

The orchestra will be performing at its usual venue, the Woodstock Playhouse, on Sunday afternoon, April 13, at 3 p.m. Music Director Nathan Madsen decided to get things going in an impressive way, with an all-Beethoven program. He has enlisted soprano Kimberly Kahan as soloist, to perform the concert aria “Ah! perfido,” major Beethoven which is not often heard. Kahan, who was present at the press conference, contradicted the common notion that Beethoven’s writing for the voice is difficult to perform. “This aria sits beautifully for the lyric soprano voice,” she insisted. The program also includes the “Egmont” Overture, a rarely-heard set of Contradances (yes, Beethoven wrote for the dance hall too!), and the First Symphony. Madsen, who is living in Lubbock, Texas and also leads an orchestra in Utah, is hoping to return to live on the east coast before too long. Of course we hope this concert will show the WCO at its best, but just the fact that it is taking place at all is gratifying. There are tentative plans for a second concert this season. Check out www.wco-online.com.

Another fine event occurred at the Olive Free Library on March 22 with the opening of the new Piano Plus! Series. These concerts, three of them this season, were planned for Saturday afternoons to avoid conflicts with other series, a commendable solution to a pet peeve of mine. The opening concert of the series, greeted by a full house, featured four Piano Fellows from the Bard College Conservatory of Music. These pianists are training to be collaborative artists (commonly called “accompanists” but I don’t like that term). Their playing throughout was of solo caliber. Hyanghyun Lee played Chopin’s “Barcarolle” with beautiful sound and shading, and later collaborated with tenor Barrett Radziun in songs of Schubert and Yoshinao Nakada. Julia Hsu played Haydn’s Sonata No. 50, in G, in a clear, lovely, controlled manner, with plenty of sprightly energy in the finale. She then gave a powerful, colorful performance of the finale of Dutilleux’s exciting Piano Sonata which made me wish for the whole thing. Eri Nakamura took on Chopin’s “Andante spianato et Grand Polonaise Brillante,” often considered Chopin’s most difficult work. If she showed a few moments of strain, the same could be said of most well-known soloists who play this piece; she was generally quite fine, spectacular in the challenging coda. Szilvia Miko took on another major challenge, Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit.” Again there were a few moments where the difficulty of the music showed, but in general she conquered its problems. Her playing of the central “Le Gibet,” which can sound monotonous, was mesmerizing. The series continues on April 19 with a solo recital (plus!) by Balint Zlodos. Congratulations to series curator George Tsontakis on a splendid liftoff.

Unsurprising, but gratifying, is the announcement of this summer’s Maverick Concerts season, which you can see at www.maverickconcerts.org. It looks like a typically stimulating season. New this summer is an upgrade in the available food options, which will be provided at Saturday concerts by Yum-Yum. I find the 6:30 p.m. start time for most Saturday Maverick concerts very inconvenient, but having some serious food available there will make things a lot better.

Bar Scott and Abigail Thomas. (photo by Dion Ogust)

“Napping is a crucial part of being a writer. A good nap is like an oasis. When sinking into a nap, I get my best ideas.” — Abigail Thomas

“I’m more of a walker. I walk four to five miles a day, and I bring pen and paper with me.” — Bar Scott

A writers festival tells us what to read and how to write. The fifth annual Woodstock Writers Festival, April 3-6, did both with a festive flair and was also tremendously entertaining. I didn’t make it to all the events, but here are highlights, including my favorite quotes.

The onstage conversation between local memoirist Abigail Thomas and her former student, Bar Scott, provided both laughs and poignant moments. Scott, a Woodstock musician who now lives in Colorado, read from The Present Giver, her book about the death of her three-year-old son from cancer. They discussed the importance of writing about life’s pain, with Thomas remarking, “The hardest stuff opens you.”

Thomas also gave practical advice: “As a thing is happening to you that you can’t believe is happening, take notes. There are so many details you’ll forget.” On the other hand, anything can become grist for the mill, she added: “Right now, I’m writing something I’m really interested in, but it’s profoundly shallow. I know it will quicken and will mean something. Anything you’re obsessed by — keep track.”

As a writer struggling with structure in my book manuscript, I was reassured by the fiction panelists, all of whom said they took at least seven years to write their latest book. Jenny Offill said when she was working on what became her novel Dept. of Speculation, she threw out her first two years of writing except for the few paragraphs she loved, and she started over. That’s pretty much what I’m ready to do, so it made me feel a lot better.

I took one of the all-day writing workshops, “How to Get Your Nonfiction Book Published,” which was packed with vital information on the world of literary agents and publishers. If all the workshop leaders are as professional and smart as agent Lynn Johnston, writers out there should consider attending a workshop next year.

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, the post-apocalyptic novel World Made by Hand, and other works of fiction and nonfiction, managed to be funny while scaring the bejesus out of us with his analysis of what’s wrong with our civilization and why he believes its collapse is imminent. The main problem? “Our society has a Master Wish: Please, God, can we keep driving to Wal-Mart forever?”

Explaining why our financial systems are in trouble, Kunstler remarked, “We’re seeing the normalization of the belief that you can get something for nothing. Today all adults believe that — it used to be just seven-year-olds.” His recommendation for surviving the predicted crisis: “We have to downscale and localize the economic systems we depend on — agriculture, transportation, commerce.”

Saturday night’s keynote speaker, character actor Stephen Tobolowsky (Groundhog Day, Glee, Californication, etc.) declared, “I’ve written screenplays. That’s a horrible, horrible way to live.” Luckily, he enjoys writing stories, and he has two rules: “The stories are true, and the stories happened to me. True always trumps clever.”

Instead of reading aloud, he narrated “Conference Hour,” a piece from his 2012 collection The Dangerous Animals Club. The tale takes place during Tobolowky’s years as an acting student, but the stated moral of the story is a good one for writers: “Rejection is the doorway that takes you to who you really are.”

The biography panel wasn’t quite as gossipy as I’d hoped. We did hear from Johnny Carson’s lawyer and biographer, Henry Bushkin, about the phone call from Ronald Reagan to Carson on the day after the inauguration. The new President was apologizing for the serious gaffe of having seated Carson’s wife in the fifth row, while Frank Sinatra’s wife was in the second row.

We also received the arresting information than J. Michael Lennon, author of Norman Mailer: A Double Life, spent over three years reading 45,000 letters written by Mailer — a total of 25 million words. Now that’s writing!

Dean Gitter

We’re on the outer edge of an era when everyone in the Catskills has known of Dean Gitter. But not as the folk singer making a return to the stage at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 27, at the Emerson Resort and Spa, as a fundraiser for the Belleayre Music Festival while premiering his first album in 57 years, “Old Folkies Never Die,”

Gitter turned a scenic relic known as the Riseley Barn into The Emerson. Only then, when he rebuilt it, the place was Catskill Corners, home to the world’s largest kaleidoscope (still there).

Earlier, he had founded WTZA (later morphed into RNN), Ulster County’s first television station that was embroiled for years in a fight over the broadcast tower and its light on top of Overlook Mountain. He also championed big dreams for the area that ranged from the moving of a Steamtown old train museum here to the creation of a massive multi-national ethnic theme park.

Most, though, tie Dean Gitter to his Belleayre Resort vision and the 15 years it’s struggled to get built as a destination resort on the same mountain where the state owns the Catskills longest-in-service ski area. They recall vociferous battles and barbed words, or the heightened negotiations that eventually saw the project championed by former Governor Eliot Spitzer, given go-aheads by New York City and a even some of the environmental organizations that had once fought it. In fact, it now seems closer to actually being built than at any point.

“It remains to be seen whether people will come to hear something musically valid or to look at a two headed calf,” Gitter says of his first area concert…ever. “I’m based outside of Baltimore now, although Lynn and I still keep our place in Big Indian. I have seven grandchildren, six of whom are within four miles of my house…and I started playing music on stage again about six months ago.”

How did such a major shift take place, allowing the 79-year-old to share a part of his life he had kept hidden away for half a century?

“Two things,” he answers. “I bought a guitar, a 1920 Galiano, and it was my first steel string guitar…I couldn’t keep my hands off it. Then I went to the hundredth celebration of Woody Guthrie’s birth at the Kennedy Center and among the people who performed was Rambling Jack Elliot, whom I hadn’t seen in decades. I did some math and figured he had to be 83. And then I figured if he can do this, why couldn’t I?”

About the same time, someone working at the Emerson, in which Gitter had sold his ownership, mentioned how his one album “Ghost Ballads,” released in 1957 with a cover illustration by Charles Addams, was being downloaded in droves. Maybe a new album could be recorded?

Gitter booked time in a Woodstock studio last autumn with producer/bass player Erik Buddenhagen. Then he started playing in the Folklore Society of Greater Washington and World Folk Music Association’s D.C. area venues.

“I played where folk music has become limited to,” he says with a robust laugh. “When I found that the other people on stage were playing James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan — all great musicians, mind you — I realized a lot of people hadn’t heard real folk music so I tailored my shows accordingly.”

Gitter notes how his mother was an accomplished performer and pianist and he learned piano at five. He remembers his father bringing home early 78 RPM recordings by Josh White, and the big hit that The Weavers had with “Goodnight, Irene” when he was in his early teens. He started playing along on a plastic ukulele.

“I loved it all,” Gitter says. “I moved on to a four string tenor guitar and when I was a senior in high school my father bought me a top-of-the-line Martin guitar, which was the greatest gift he ever gave me.”

While studying at Harvard a friend started a record label and engaged Gitter, who was already playing local clubs, to set up a folklore division.

Jim Rooney’s journey through American music has taken him from low down barrooms to fine halls and grand stages throughout the world. Originally from Boston, he began playing guitar and singing with Woodstock banjo legend Bill Keith when both were in college, got immersed in the Cambridge music scene and ran the seminal club in Harvard Square, Club 47, in the 1960s and put together music for the Newport Folk Festivals; traveled the world as tour manager with Thelonious Monk, Dionne Warwick, Herbie Mann and other jazz acts; was the first manager of the Bearsville Studios here in Woodstock; made one of the seminal folk-country albums, Sweet Moments with the Blue Velvet Band, with Keith and Eric Weissberg; sang with the Woodstock Mountains Revue; landed in Nashville where he became a producer and publisher, making records with John Prine, Iris DeMent, Nancy Griffith, Don Everly, Alison Krauss, Townes Van Zandt…published music of Van Zandt, Jesse Winchester, Prine…and on and on.

The stories in his new memoir, In It For The Long Run: A Musical Odyssey, range through Cambridge, Woodstock, Nashville, California, Ireland, Texas, and it’s clear that Rooney was in the right place at many right times, but marked the experience by always being willing to work hard and dig deep into his creative well.

The book is his third. In 1971, he wrote Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters; followed in 1979 by Baby, Let Me Follow You Down, with Eric Von Schmidt.

Here’s an excerpt from Jim Rooney’s book, In It For The Long Run: A Musical Odyssey.

Woodstock years

(Jim Rooney came to Woodstock in the late 1960s to manage Bearsville Sound Studios for Albert Grossman, and found a hole in the ground and a grand plan. He stayed on)

As the work on the studio progressed, there was a lot of specialized construction needed for acoustics and soundproofing. A man from New York named Bob Hansen was the first acoustic consultant. Paul (Cypert) had never done this kind of work before, but he was up to the challenge and was very creative. Hansen would tell him what was required. Paul would think about it, look at the space, and then say, “You could do this, this, and this.” That would be it. He’d get it done and get it done right. Rock and roll had opened up the idea of residential studios where a band could come and stay for the duration of the recording, so there was a two-bedroom apartment at one end of the studio. The restaurant was going to have a French chef. Albert had a Japanese gardener who grew organic vegetables. All of this was supposed to be tied together as a feature of the studio. As time passed it became clear to me that this was totally Albert’s operation. The Band had nothing to do with it, except that Robbie Robertson would occasionally be asked his opinion about things. But the studio was Albert’s all the way. He owned it. He paid for it. The name was the Bearsville Sound Studios.

Amazingly, by mid-September we had the “B” studio ready for a shakedown session. John Simon organized a session with John Hall, later of the band Orleans (and still later a U.S. Congressman from the area). He had a song called “Dancing in the Moonlight,” which was the first song recorded at Bearsville. Albert had some kind of a record deal with Ampex at the time, so he got a good deal on the two 16-track Ampex machines. We had a nice big Quad-Eight industrial-strength board. At the time Dolby and DBX had competing noise reduction systems, so we had DBX on the 16-track machines and Dolby on the 2-tracks. We had the latest in limiters, compressors and “gates” which had all been developed to deal with rock and roll volume levels. We also had two real echo chambers as well as two EMT echo plates. The place was well equipped, to say the least.

(Photos by Dion Ogust)

If not for that single, tantalizing word on the windowless white wall — six black capital letters, spaced wide, like a line on an eye chart: U T O P I A — a passerby might conclude that this is the blandest building in Bearsville, a place where a ladder lies abandoned at the foot of an unmarked gray door and little worth seeing or hearing is likely to happen, inside or outside.

That passerby would be mistaken. In fact this building, at 293 Tinker Street, is a preserve of Woodstock’s still-unfolding modern musical history. For decades it has been the home of Radio Woodstock 100.1 (WDST), whose offices — entered on the south side of the building, opposite the Bearsville Theater — teem with music memorabilia and include the former Utopia Video Studios, now known as Utopia Soundstage.

Those stark, sans-serif letters on the buildings’ north side signify a seminal period that began 35 years ago, when the legendary impresario Albert Grossman, a k a the Baron of Bearsville, presented his newly built Utopia Video Studios to one of his clients, Todd Rundgren, a k a the Hermit of Mink Hollow, the innovative rock guitarist, founder of the band Utopia, and incipient second-careerist as an engineer and producer of music videos and explorer of a largely uncharted technosonic universe.

It was here, at Utopia Video and other outposts of Grossman’s Bearsville Studios complex, as well as at his home studio in Lake Hill, that Rundgren in the 1970s and ‘80s engineered and produced not only his own music (including the hit singles “Hello It’s Me”and “I Saw the Light” and the virtuosic double-album Something/Anything?), but also parts of Meatloaf’s landmark album Bat Out of Hell and, before that, work by the Band, Jesse Winchester, and Badfinger. His circa 1980 music video “Time Heals” is reportedly the first to blend live action with computer graphics and the second to appear on MTV.

Rundgren’s relationship with Grossman’s Bearsville Records grew frayed. Released from his contract in the mid 1980s, the musician left Woodstock and eventually settled on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. From there, at age 65, Rundgren remains active as an occasional solo performer and an intrepid investigator of Internet-based music distribution technology. From time to time he pops up, strumming a guitar or ukelele poolside at his Kauai digs, as a guest on Live From Daryl’s House, the live-performance TV show hosted by Daryl Hall.