David Izenson, rarely recorded outside his role as bass player for Ornette Coleman, and Ismet Siral, known as the “Turkish Coltrane,” are among the musicians appearing on the about-to-be-released three-CD set of recordings from Creative Music Studio (CMS). The CD set, first of several re-mastered collections, features music taped in the 1970s and 1980s at the CMS center in Woodstock, where greats such as Don Cherry and John Cage participated in ground-breaking experiments in musical improvisation.

“We’re very lucky to get this archive preserved,” said Woodstock resident Karl Berger, who co-founded CMS with his wife, vocalist Ingrid Sertso, and the support of Ornette Coleman himself. “This is music that didn’t happen anywhere else. It was a rather loose atmosphere at CMS. People who would never think of playing together in New York — who wouldn’t even think of going to each other’s concerts — had a chance to collaborate.”

CMS workshops took place at the old Ohler’s Lodge West Hurley site where New York Conservatory of the Arts is now located. Weekend jam sessions were recorded on reel-to-reel tapes that were labeled haphazardly and stored away. Over the past two years, through a grant from Columbia University, which will archive the tapes, Berger and CMS participant and sound engineer Ted Orr have been listening to the roughly 400 tapes. First the tapes have to be baked to dehumidify the petroleum-based material, and then they begin to degrade as they are played. Orr digitizes the recordings to preserve them, and highlights are selected for the CDs, while full versions of each participant’s music are created to give to the artists themselves.

There’s a problem in the case of Charles Brackeen, a saxophonist who played with Ornette and recorded only a handful of albums with his own band. “He seems to have fallen off the face of the earth,” said Rob Saffer, president of the board of directors of the Creative Music Foundation. “Even his ex-wife doesn’t know where he is, if he’s still alive and still sane.”

The first CD opens with several duets between Brackeen and drummer Ed Blackwell. A rippling soprano sax evokes a Mideastern ambiance that mingles impeccably with Blackwell’s innovative drum lines. Izenson plays bass in several numbers with Berger and Sertso. Violist Leroy Jenkins teams up with guitarist James Emery to create fascinating textures. Olu Dara, best known as a cornetist, guitarist, and singer, fronts a blues orchestra, leading on harmonica. Other tracks feature Roscoe Mitchell, Oliver Lake, Nana Vasconcelos, Frederick Rzweski, Ursula Oppens, and Foday Suso and the Mandingo Griot Society.

Berger is glad to have the re-mastering supervised by Orr, a multi-instrumentalist who cooked meals at CMS as part of a work-study exchange. “Ted knows the recordings and the people on them,” said Berger. “They were live concerts, and the people who recorded them weren’t aware they should annotate the tapes. They’ll be labeled, say, ‘May 17,’ with no year, or just one name when there were 16 people playing.”

Very rare material

The early version of CMS ran from 1971 to 1984, but the tapes only went up to 1981. A few weeks ago, Berger was contacted by Stuart Leigh, an independent radio producer who has made field recordings in Africa and was in charge of some of the CMS taping. Leigh heard about the digitization project and delivered another 75 recordings that were in his possession.

“Just a few people have heard this stuff,” said Saffer, who has brought his skills as a producer and an organizer to rejuvenate CMS since the digitization project began. “Karl is 78, a wonderful artist. The last thing he should be doing is running an organization. He should be composing, teaching, and playing.”

Saffer met Berger by taking one of his Gamala Taki rhythm training workshops, studying the techniques that enabled musicians of different genres to improvise together at CMS. The experience gave Saffer insight into the artistic and historical value of the work. “CMS has meaning for a lot of museums and fans,” he said. “It stands for improvisation, freedom, honesty, and a non-dogmatic, non-genre approach to music.” He was determined to bring the music and the method to more people.

The need for CMS

After over two decades of teaching workshops on their own around the world, Berger and Sertso have begun to lead five-day CMS retreats, in which they are joined by renowned musicians who teach during the day and give public performances each evening. The third such event will be held June 8-11 at Full Moon Lodge in Oliverea. Meanwhile, Berger has put together an Improviser’s Orchestra that performs in New York City with a rotating group of about 75 musicians.

“The need for CMS is still here, more than ever,” said Berger. “People have less time to get together and experiment. School programs are conservative in their stylistic training. They don’t allow much exploration. Our last two workshops at Full Moon had amazing concerts that you can’t hear anywhere else.”

The new CDs will expand the music’s reach still farther. The set features liner notes on the recordings from the 70s and 80s, the history of CMS and its Archive Project, and rare photos from the CMS Archive. Also are included are interviews with Olu Dara, Oliver Lake, and other artists, part of the Creative Music Foundation’s Oral History Project. ++

The three-CD set Creative Music Studio Archive Selections, Volume 1, was released on iTunes and at retail stores on April 29. The set costs $29 and is also available through the Innova label at www.innova.mu. For more information on CMS and the programs at Full Moon Lodge, to be held June 9-13, see http://www.creativemusicfoundation.org/.

Eva van Rijn (photo by Dion Ogust)

The Historical Society of Woodstock will open its 2014 season 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, May 18 at its lower Comeau Drive location in Woodstock (directly across from the Woodstock Town Hall on Tinker St.) with a new exhibit titled, Artist Couples of Woodstock. The exhibit will feature paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures created by eight artist couples who lived, worked, and socialized in Woodstock, including: Milton Avery & Sally Avery, Edward Chavez & Eva van Rijn, Caroline Haeberlin & Reginald Wilson, Doris Lee & Arnold Blanch, Eugene Ludins & Hannah Small, Nan Mason & Wilna Hervey, Caroline Speare Rohland & Paul Rohland, and Andrée Ruellan & Jack Taylor. The works are from the permanent collection of the Historical Society of Woodstock, supplemented by generous loans from the Arthur A. Anderson Collection.

Self Portrait by Eva van Rijn, c. 1984, oil on canvas, 15”x17,” HSW Collection.

This exhibition includes works by sixteen Woodstock artists and was curated by eight students from a Bard College seminar about Woodstock art taught by art historian Tom Wolf. It offers a sense of the variety of styles and temperaments that flourished in the art colony through the unique perspective of artists who made their personal artistic statements while sharing their domestic lives.

Refreshments will be served and the public is invited as the event is free. The exhibit continues every Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m.-5 p.m. through July 6.

The public is also invited on Sunday May 25 at 2 p.m., as the Historical Society presents a “Conversation with artist Eva Van Rijn.” Taking a “step back in time,” Van Rijn will recall what life was like in the “Woodstock colony” when the artists featured in the exhibition were at the peak of their artistic careers. Born in Holland, Eva van Rijn emigrated to the U.S. with her parents during World War II. The family settled in Woodstock, where the vitality and creativity of the “Woodstock colony” influenced Eva’s early ambition to create art. Eva married painter-sculptor Edward Chavez. Born in New Mexico, Chavez was a vital part of the Woodstock art colony and taught at the Art Students League. Eva continues to live in Woodstock and is noted for her landscape and wildlife paintings.

Parking is available in either the upper or lower Comeau parking lots and, as always, admission is free. For more information on the exhibit and Woodstock history, visit www.historicalsocietyofwoodstock.org; follow HSW on Facebook at Historical Woodstock, or e-mail, woodstockhistory@hvc.rr.com.

Three books, three different takes on the shape of literature these days. And, as should always be the case with things cultural and/or cultured, they provide a whole host of glimpses into the ways society is spinning webs for, and entertaining itself this millennium.

Shawn Purcell’s West Kill Creek caught my eye by its title and cover image. I lived in a community of the same name for a decade, and passed the sign for a creek of similar name, as captured here, on an almost weekly basis for many years there. Published by Troy Book Makers, and a first work by a longtime reference librarian, the novel captures the terrain I was looking to dive back into quite well, both in the Catskills as well as earlier scenes over in Columbia County and some later moments captured as West Kill Creek’s protagonists head off, post-apocalypse, towards the distant Adirondacks.

There’s great enthusiasm in Purcell’s writing here from the get-go. He’s good with our Upstate experiences hunkering down as bad weather hits, diving into whatever we’ve stored up for such times, gaining confidence as we survive without basic appliances. He also plays well off the innate loneliness of rural life and how it can lead us to hide from neighbors one moment and band with them like family the next.

The plot here is strong enough, too — a lethal virus wipes out much of society. Those left struggle, make do as gas and other supplies run out. Then things turn mean. Think of James Howard Kunstler’s gone-gas extravaganzas, without any small town ambience left. And Purcell’s adept at reaching back to engage a reader with his chosen territory’s rich but relatively unknown history, especially one like me who’s got reason to thirst for such things.

In the end, though, the novel, at over 400 pages, suffers from what ails so many books these days. It rambles a bit too much, detours too often, and could benefit from a decent editor’s drive to sharpen strengths and take out chaff. Which is a shame, given the richness of the territory covered, the historic and other gifts Purcell brings to his writing, and our need to be able to read more about life in these areas that get so easily forgotten by the rest of society these days.

The poet Gretchen Primack, whose animal-adoring and sweetly single-noted Kind we reviewed just a few months ago (and who works the front at Golden Notebook with regularity), has a new book out with Woodstock-based Mayapple Press , Doris’ Red Spaces, that immediately had me rushing for her earlier work, and my review, with new eyes, ears and a decent amount of reappraisal. These new works, collected, assembled, and presented in what’s becoming its publishers signature-quality way, are dense with emotions, experiences, allusions, and ways of being read. They whisper, at first reading, only to beg, demand, and deserve second readings start to finish. Many poems involve what we slowly realize is an imaginary friend, Doris, there to deal with very adult situations. All capture well the daily ways in which we face, overcome, and grow from small challenges…and epiphanies.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

As a local I was long ago acquainted with a) struggling artists, b) cottage industry artists, c) weekend artists, and d) “the ruination of Woodstock” as represented by families attached to businessmen working at Rotron, IBM and eventually imported from New York City.

Recently home for a few days, I hear about a new model of artist in the person of one Lowell Miller, a highly successful investment manager whose company, Miller/Howard, employs almost 50 Hudson Valley residents. While Lowell has lived in town for many years, he’s only recently gone public with what’s been a lifelong pursuit, with fairly instant local attention. We schedule a studio visit by phone, agreeing to meet two hours before the new WAAM exhibition opening for which three of his works were selected by Ian Barry, a guest curator and Director of the Tang Museum at Skidmore College.

Walking through the first room of a large studio, I’m reminded that I’m not a student of modern sculpture — I’m really here out of sheer curiosity. When I inquire, Lowell informs me he didn’t go to art school (though he’s had much feedback from his friend Wade Saunders, a sculptor and sculpture critic for Art in America). And while he’s “absorbed a lot of art” he hasn’t consciously tried to emulate anyone, nor does he consider himself part of any movement or style. “I’m just trying to realize myself,” he says, half way into our hour and a half talk.

“I’ve never encountered a successful businessman who is also a serious artist…” I say by way of a mission statement. Without hesitation Miller counters, “Why favor left brain over right brain? What’s wrong with having both? Some people might have both.”

I blink, conceding the point, and upon hearing that this man is an almost 40-year student of Aikido I am not surprised. The tour continues.

Though cost of materials is clearly not an issue here, Miller’s sculptures are — for the most part — modestly sized and executed in bronze, ceramic, or modest mixed media. A craft-like quality abounds, not in the least self-aggrandizing; the work isn’t cool, slick or academic. These are the creations of someone, who, finding they have something to say, has developed skills sufficient to such expression. In a sense, Lowell Miller seems a three dimensional cartoonist. The work exudes a playfulness, often hinging on a visual pun involving title, but the whimsy isn’t childish, it’s raw, edgy — occasionally, urgently sexual.

“I thought Big Business was prudish,” I posit. “How is it your work is frank if not downright obscene?”

“It’s been a problem, in my mind, at least, but self-censorship is the worst kind of repression…” Miller suggests.

Miller now lets down his guard, telling me a little more about his life than most people would understand and which I am not comfortable in fully revealing. For a man who competes for a living and by way of sport such transparency places a journalist in a curious position. To be specific, while seeking to “dig and reveal,” I am soon provided such an embarrassment of riches that while the writer in me is highly pleased, I also become aware of an instinct to protect my interviewee from his own candor. While in the back of my mind I keep wondering why Miller is giving me far more than I can imagine extracting from him through hard labor.

“You stripped yourself of your armoring.”After studying philosophy and literature at Sarah Lawrence College (in the first graduating class to include males) Miller knew only what he didn’t want to do. Never planning to practice, he bought some time studying law. “I simply wanted the degree and merely passing didn’t require much work. A first love had just ended wretchedly, I was suffering from a highly painful ‘male plumbing’ condition. Physically, psychically, I was in agony — which, we know — is a highly motivational state. I started doing exercises detailed in a book by Wilhelm Reich’s protege, Alexander Lowen, who’d eventually create the field of Bio-energetics. I had a lot of time on my hands so I did a lot of the exercises. And I did them often. For hours and hours. The result being…”

Now it was Miller’s turn to blink. “Exactly. It was like a dam broke. And I went through the demolition process rather quickly. For a few months I sobbed uncontrollably, for another few I yawned, almost constantly. I was living in a cheap place off Great Jones St. (in New York) with a bathtub in the kitchen. Everytime I soaked in the tub a short text popped into my head, and I’d jump out, dripping, to write it down. I sent Rolling Stone magazine a bunch of my texts and they started printing them at $30 a pop. Then Jann Wenner’s austerity regime reduced my fee to $25 which didn’t help my finances any. I thought I should find a way to make a living. But I was busy with all the body changes induce by the armor breakthroughs. Most times when I wasn’t experiencing strange sensations, like a warm ring around my chest glowing and glowing, I found odd postures and contortions to stretch every muscle and joint, stretching out a new container for a new energy.

Above, Rehearsal for Spamalot. Below, Randy Conti gives direction. (photos by Dion Ogust)

It’s been two days since these 19 theater enthusiasts have gathered at the New York Conservatory for the Arts in West Hurley for the first time, and less than ten days from their first Woodstock Playhouse repertory performance of the new season, in Spamalot. But all sing as if they’ve been raised together since babes. And when director Randy Conti, one of the Playhouse’s two energetic heads, calls action the production feels there for all but costumes, props and sets. Or music beyond musical director Brendan Shapiro’s current piano accompaniment.

Everyone’s fit in their leotards and muscle shirts. The women all wear heels, the men solid walking-like shoes. Yet they dance and leap and sing and cavort and ham it up with no sense of constraint other than the precision and overall sense of joyous musicality that’s long been a NYCA characteristic, and is now the key to all the new Playhouse productions.

The first act starts as Conti introduces the first props — fake fish for a slappy song about this being England and not Finland. A few stage directions get everyone in gear and Arthur comes on stage, followed by a rousing number, “I Am Not Dead Yet.”

Even the cast is smiling, laughing and clapping at all the fun bits within moments of the musical’s start.

The Playhouse’s Doug Farrell notes that yes, there are about a half dozen returning cast members from last year, and a couple from each of the previous three seasons since the former outdoor theater, built on the site of a fabled 1930s barn theater, got up and running again. And yes, things have been growing for the theater and its summer troupes, both in terms of audience loyalties (and numbers) and the Woodstock Playhouse’s reputation as a feeder for Broadway and traveling casts.

As it used to be, Farrell points out, back when Robert Elwyn first started it all in the latter years of the Great Depression, when what he created almost instantly became known as a rural extension of Broadway. Which in turn led to years of various stars, both on the stage and behind it, getting their start off Mill Hill Road, from local boy Lee Marvin to Diane Keaton, Larry Hagman, and a whole host of others.

“So many other rural theaters got their start because of the Playhouse’s success,” Farrell notes. “And we’re becoming a stepping stone once again…just this year one of the members of our first Chorus Line cast has landed a role in Book of Mormon. The roots of Broadway are waking up…”

As the hoofing, singing and fun theatrical acting continues in the NYCA rehearsal theater down the hall, we look over old clippings, and Farrell tells me of the Playhouse’s new academy, which will be taking in actor students, and putting on productions, year round from here on in.

Furthermore, he notes how there seems to be a new wave of talent rising, as noted the night before during the Tony Awards on Broadway itself.

“Maybe it has to do with the success of Glee and all the performance competition shows,” he says. “All we know is that it’s a great time to be doing what we’re doing.”

Later, he and Conti note how their last two seasons have been getting ever better, from that talent quotient through to sets, costuming, music. They get calls from Long Island and New Jersey theater fans who’ve heard the buzz. And even other businesses in Woodstock are noticing the effects of the Playhouse’s success, even if they don’t always get the fact that it’s all been made to happen by the new entity being not-for-profit.

“This all came about with a million dollar investment,” Farrell says of the $350,000 he and Conti had raised for their own NYCA theater being augmented with $750,000 in loans from the Catskill Watershed Corporation…and the help of numerous government entities, local banks, and foundations…as well as a truly appreciative audience.

“This year as a fundraising gift we’ve got 100 copies of a 1941 Al Hirschfield drawing of the old Playhouse, with Elwyn and Sally Rand among the persons depicted in his inimitable style,” he adds as a roar of laughter and clapping comes in from the rehearsal room.

We rush back for a rendition of “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway,” with everyone smiling who’s not on stage, and then the showstopping “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.”

With Spamalot running from June 19 through 29, Jesus Christ Superstar from July 10 through 20, The Three Musketeers from July 24 through 26, and West Side Story from July 31 through August 10, it’s going to be a grand season.

For tickets and more information, call 679-6900, visit www.woodstockplayhouse.org, or stop by the box office at the Playhouse on Mill Hill Road from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays once the first performances kick off in a week.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

Benjamin Hochman (photo by Juergen Frank)

Benjamin Hochman became a musician almost by chance. As a five-year-old, growing up in Jerusalem, he had a caregiver in the afternoon who was also a music teacher. She taught him a few folk tunes and he learned them so quickly that she told his parents he had talent and should get music lessons. His parents were music-lovers but all they had ever played was recordings.

Hochman, who will open the Maverick Concerts season for 2014 on Sunday, June 29,  went on to study at the Rubin Academy in Israel until he was 16, when he came to the U.S. to audition for the Curtis Institute, one of the most prestigious music schools in the world. He was accepted and studied there with Claude Frank until his graduation, then went on to further studies at the Mannes School of Music with Richard Goode, with whom he still occasionally coaches. Since 2010 he has won the Avery Fischer Career Grant, made three CDs, collaborated with numerous major orchestras and well-known soloists, and joined the piano faculty of Bard College.

I caught up with Hochman on the phone from Berlin, where he was about to play his fourth performance of Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto on tour with the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra under Leon Botstein (following St. Petersburg, Budapest, and Vienna). He is one of the relatively few elite pianists who is able to make a living from playing, but I asked him if the burden of touring outweighed the pleasure of performing. “I feel tremendously fortunate,” he said, “that I have the luxury and privilege of playing music every day, sharing it with others and being paid for it. But it’s also a very demanding life. It takes a lot of stamina and dedication.”

Hochman will be collaborating with the Shanghai Quartet in the opening concert of the 2014 Maverick Concerts season on June 29. The previous evening, the 28th, he will be playing across the river at Bard for the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle series, a program of the three Brahms Violin Sonatas with his wife, violinist Jennifer Koh. “It’s a challenge playing two different programs so close together,” he told me, “but it does happen. Scheduling sometimes works in funny ways. But diversity is part of what makes life as a performer exciting.” Collaborating with Koh comes naturally, since the couple lives together in New York. However, Hochman has never performed with the Shanghai Quartet before. But he has played with the first violinist and the cellist at the Marlboro Music Festival, “so I know half of the quartet.” At Maverick they will be playing Bright Sheng’s “Dance Capriccio,” written for the Shanghai Quartet. Also on the program are two Czech masterpieces, Janácek’s “In the Mist” for solo piano and Dvorák’s Quintet for Piano and Strings.

Hochman is very pleased to be making his Maverick Concerts debut, having heard about the series and its home from numerous colleagues. “I hear it has marvelous acoustics, and it’s a very special space,” he says. From Maverick, he goes on this summer to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, a festival in Maine (including the premiere of a trio by the highly-regarded Kaija Saariaho), and back to the Hudson Valley for Schubert at the Bard Music Festival in August.

Colette Ruoff (photo by Dion Ogust)

Imagine you’re living in a nursing home or hospice, and a singer-songwriter comes to you and asks you who you really are. Together, over time, you write a song about something essential about your life. Then one day, you go to a concert hall and hear a choir of young people perform the song you’ve composed.

Imagine you’re a singer-songwriter, hearing the stories of an elder, a person approaching death, as she reviews her life, and you help turn her experience into art. Now imagine you’re a 20-year-old choir member who has learned a new song about someone else’s life, and now that person is sitting in front of you as you sing his song.

“My first thought was, this is the best thing I ever heard of,” said Colette Ruoff of Rosendale, describing how she felt when she first learned about Lifesongs. The program, started by two Santa Fe musicians, is the model for Ruoff’s new project, SageArts, which is training Hudson Valley singer-songwriters to help elders write songs about their lives.

“It moved me that we could celebrate and honor, through a creative process, the elders in our community. I fell in love,” said Ruoff, an organizational consultant who encountered Lifesongs while working with the program’s non-profit organization, Academy for the Love of Learning. “It woke something up in me that was asleep. I’ve never worked with elders, and I’m not a musician. But I found myself inspired to bring the program here, partly because I love this community, and I’ve been yearning to know how I can contribute to it. When this appeared, it was obvious.”

SageArts kicked off with a benefit concert and dinner in early June to raise money for Lifesongs founders Acushla Bastilbe and Molly Sturges to come and train eight local songwriters in the process of working with elders.

“One of the great tragedies of American culture is that we separate the generations from each other,” said Woodstocker Elly Wininger, after taking the two-day training. “Other cultures carry their elders on their backs and consult the elders for their wisdom and experience. Young people here have terrible prejudices and stereotypes about old people, and the old see the young as spoiled and tragic. I’ve seen those stereotypes break down in projects like this one.”

She was also drawn to SageArts because of its emphasis on songwriting, which “transcends all trappings of intelligence, age, everything except this life force we all have. I love being a witness to that and supporting it in other people. It’s magical to me.”

Elizabeth Clark-Jerez, harpist/vocalist/songwriter for the band Mamalama, also took the training. She commented, “We’re all facing these big questions about our own mortality. A huge part of the training process was to deal with those questions ourselves first. When we’re working with elders who are at that place, we need to be able to be there and not have our own fears get in the way.”

Vladimir Feltsman

Pianist Benjamin Hochman made an impressive impact on his first landing in our area. Saturday evening, June 28, he performed the three Brahms Violin Sonatas with his wife, Jennifer Koh. Less than 24 hours later, he joined the Shanghai Quartet for the opening of the 99th Maverick Concerts Season at the Maverick Hall in Woodstock. Most of the concert pianists on our stages today can get around the notes in impressive fashion, and many of them also have fine musical insights. But there are few who can play with consistently beautiful and varied tone the way Hochman does, making his performances a real pleasure.

At Bard, Koh and Hochman closed the 2014 Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle season. During the first part of the program, the first two Sonatas, I was more impressed with the pianist than the violinist. Hochman devoured Brahms’s tricky writing with ease, making beautiful sounds from the piano all the while. Koh started on a fairly small scale, which is seldom right for Brahms, and her sound was variable, sometimes thin. Although Hochman had the piano lid up and was playing with power, he shouldn’t have been covering the violin, yet sometimes Koh’s part wasn’t coming through as well as it should have. All this changed after intermission, in the Third Violin Sonata. Here the musicians walked the balance tightrope successfully, playing with wide dynamics and great power yet with everything always audible. Maybe the Third Sonata is just Koh’s favorite. (It’s mine.) Or maybe they took a while to get used to the on-stage acoustics at Bard’s Olin Hall, which I’ve been told by musicians can be tricky. Whatever the cause, that Third Sonata was truly thrilling.
The next day, at Maverick, Hochman made his debut in the company of the Shanghai Quartet, which was playing there for the 24th consecutive season. That concert opened with a full-throated, powerful performance of Haydn’s familiar Quartet in D Minor, Op. 76, No. 2, known as the “Fifths” from its opening motif. I think the ensemble used as much power as it would for Beethoven, which was gratifying to hear. The playing had vigor and excellent balance, and in the third movement the peasant dance rhythms were stomped out. Hochman joined the Shanghais for Bright Sheng’s “Dance Capriccio,” an entertaining if unchallenging piece from 2011 based on Sherpa dance rhythms. Coordination seemed impeccable in this tricky music. After intermission, a real treat, as Hochman played Janácek’s “In the Mist,” a very beautiful and mysterious suite. Hochman played it like the masterpiece it is, with exceptionally wide dynamics, obvious comprehension, and gorgeous tone. (Alas, there are no piano recitals at Maverick this season.) Sometimes I wish chamber ensembles wouldn’t stick so much to Dvorák’s Greatest Hits, since there are so many excellent, lesser-known works in his catalog. But I’d never think of complaining about a performance like the Piano Quintet we heard on Sunday. From the relaxed rhythms of the opening moments I knew we were in for a treat. Everyone played with beautiful sound and a wide range of expression, including some more peasant stomping. We even got an encore, the Scherzo of Schumann’s Piano Quintet, which left me hoping for the whole work from these performers next summer. Amazingly, it was the first time Hochman has played with the Shanghai Quartet. The audience was large and enthusiastic.

The music month began for me on Friday, June 6, with a benefit concert at the Kleinert-James Arts Center by soprano Lily Arbisser, mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, and pianist Leo Treitler.
It was a delight. Both singers handled a wide variety of material, solo and duet, with great skill and understanding and lovely vocal quality. Treitler may not be a virtuoso but he certainly knows how the music should go and made a strong positive contribution to the performances. It’s a pity this venue doesn’t get used for concerts more often, as it has good sound and an excellent piano.

The following night, the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle series opened with four legendary musicians, including the super-legend, pianist Menahem Pressler, a founding member of the great Beaux-Arts Trio and still playing beautifully at 90. He and violinist Jaime Laredo played a beautifully mellow version of Schubert’s Violin Sonata in D, D. 384, which had just the right kinds of balance and sound. Pressler then presented an unprogrammed birthday present to Laredo, a Chopin Nocturne that was simply exquisite. Cellist Sharon Robinson joined Pressler for Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 5, No. 2, played with fluency and a subtle assurance that were treasurable. After intermission, the three were joined by violist Michael Tree, of the now-disbanded Guarnieri Quartet, in Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E Flat, Op. 47. There were moments in this performance where I could have wished for more volatility, but it was always a musical conversation among master players and concluded an evening to treasure.

Clearing out the Stories by Calvin Grimm.

If you don’t love something, you won’t be moved to do something about it, in relation to personal relationships and the world around you…I’m an artist, and part of my job is to reflect back on to the society my observations and concerns,” says Calvin Grimm, talking about his new solo exhibition Secrets of the Heart, Water and Space, that will be part of multiple openings, 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, July 19 at the Woodstock Artists Associaton and Museum, 28 Tinker Street, in town.

Grimm’s often large abstract paintings can tear him apart, depicting conflicts between some of mankind’s most heinous self made disasters, giant oil spills, and the pure visual beauty that they can create. “It is human nature for beauty to attract our attention. So much of creativity is formed around beauty, love and the loss of love. The poetic expression of love and loss are the core of most art forms. I adore and therefore I mourn nature.”

He has planned more than just a show of his paintings. As you move about the center gallery at WAAM, you will find the reality of photos of the tragedies interspersed with the canvases; a video installation he’s created with photographer/video artist Laura Revercomb, depicting earthwork sculptures they’ve created, mylar strips interacting in a kinetic fashion in streams. “Their original intention is to some degree simulate what oil spills might be in bodies of water to attract attention to that possibility. It’s a phenomonon that became clear to me during the Gulf oil spill…after making this painting, that started in 1989, during the Prince William Sound oil spill and that I completed in 2010 during the BP oil spill.”

That particular painting will be positioned so that the viewer will be supplied with headphones, playing a piece of music by composer George Tsontakis. “The painting for me is a tragedy, visceral, slimy hurt and angry reaction to the tragedy. These are confusing emotions. We have the threat of hydrofracking and oil spills as well. We’re all becoming aware of how much more oil is moving through the corridor of the Hudson by barge and by rail from the Dakotas and Canada.”

There will also be abstract work of Grimm’s that shows his exuberant side, his startling colors blazing trails through unspoken ideas. “I recognize that there’s little to no separation to what I’m painting and what I’m feeling. That’s the beauty of being an abstract painter. I don’t have a preconceived notion with the experience of creativity.”

Grimm, a most uncompromising sort, spent many formative years as a wildlife educator, a mountaineer, horseman and mariner. In his 20s, he designed and built his home in Woodstock, and credits these experiences with developing his outlook. “The whole of the show is weaving in and out of the emotional relationship with the environment that I have and relationships I have had. In a way I’m exposing some of my heart through paintings like Sea of Acceptance, and another painting My Heart Is On That Ship Out In The Ocean, from a McGarrigle Sisters song.

“My painting often parallel things that happen in my life and I don’t always realize it until I get to the end of the painting and the title comes into it.”

His paintings have accompanied the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company, and hang in diverse locations, including in AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team.

Also opening, 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, July 19 at WAAM, the July Group Show; Rob Wade Active Member Wall and a Small Works Show. Continuing in the Towbin Wing Rediscovering Wendell Jones and in the YES Gallery, Ackerman Award Winner: Meghan Heidenberg. The openings are free and open to the public. For more information, call 679-2940.

At the 2013 Festival of the Voice. (photo by Dion Ogust)

The logistics are daunting. In the five days from July 30 to August 3, roughly 5000 people are expected to flow through the hamlet of Phoenicia (population: 309, as of 2010) for the fifth annual Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice. Approximately 130 volunteers will shepherd the audience, plus some 60 performers, 40 orchestra musicians, and 80 choir members through 21 scheduled events.

Performances will be presented on the outdoor stage at the Parish Field and at other venues around the town, as this year’s Spanish theme brings Manuel De Falla’s flamenco ballet/symphonic suite El Amor Brujo; a semi-staged The Barber of Seville; the Cambridge Chamber Singers performing music of the Spanish Renaissance; and much more.

On July 17, festival co-founder, co-organizer, and mezzo-soprano Maria Todaro learned that the county was going to re-pave Main Street the following Tuesday and Wednesday, weather permitting. And a tractor-trailer full of lumber to build the stage was due to roll in on Thursday, with a rehearsal on the stage scheduled for Monday. “We’re super-grateful that this is going to happen,” said Todaro, in her French accent, “but we’re now in a state of prayer. We’re doing the dance of the rain to make sure the rain doesn’t happen. Volunteers will be placed behind the road crew to pep-talk them and make sure they’re working hard.”

Humor is one way of handling stress — in this case, supplemented by a call to the highway department to obtain reassurance that the new paving would be firm enough to support a giant truck. “We already have a Plan B,” said Todaro. “We’re hiring pelicans to carry the lumber overhead and drop it on the field. But really, the Town of Shandaken has been super-supportive, and they’re making sure the town is pretty for the festival. Things happen like this all the time. We have a plan and something comes to disrupt, a little bit, the plan.”

Problem-solving and decision-making are funneled through “the collective brain” said Todaro. Four years of learning from the annual festivals have resulted in a structure that features a group of four at the top level: Todaro; her husband Louis Otey, a baritone who has performed worldwide, including gigs with the New York City Opera and Metropolitan Opera; virtuoso pianist and Fleischmanns resident Justin Kolb, also an international performer; and Kolb’s level-headed wife and page-turner, Barbara. The four make the major decisions — such as how to angle to stage this year so the Sunday afternoon sun does not shine into the eyes of the musicians. Instructions from the top are transmitted to a second layer of eight people, who in turn relate to 23 directors of departments that include parking, ushering, artist housing, publicity, backstage, ticketing, artist liaison, and more.

“I can’t control everyone, but I am a control freak, and I always want to know what’s going on,” said Todaro. In addition to her organizational duties, Todaro is singing Rosina in Rossini’s comic opera The Barber of Seville, with a cast that includes baritone Lucas Meacham and features New York City Opera conductor David Wroe. She is the director of the Phoenicia and Woodstock Community Choirs, which will join other local choruses to perform the festival finale, the Argentine folk mass Misa Criolla, under the baton of Argentine conductor Jorge Parodi. And perhaps most challenging of all, she is bringing her father from France to sing a program of popular Mediterranean songs.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are,” said his daughter. “Your parents are always your parents, and you want to please them.”

Originally both her parents had planned to perform, but her mother, Brazilian mezzo-soprano Maria Elena de Oliveira, was not able to obtain a visa in time — one glitch that didn’t quite get solved. Turning on a dime, Todaro rearranged the program. At a Tuesday evening rehearsal, Italian-born tenor José Todaro charmed the community choirs, who will be backing him up as he performs an array of classics, from “O Sole Mio” to “Besame Mucho.”

Going for baroque

On another level is the difficulty of attracting audiences to classical music that’s not widely familiar, such as Thursday night’s program of Baroque music, starring countertenor Brian Asawa, accompanied by period instruments. “People don’t understand the magical thing it is,” said Todaro, comparing the 17th-century castrati, with their high voices and, frequently, costumes of leather and chains, to Lady Gaga. Singers of the past might enter the extravagant sets by rising through the floor, accompanied by fireworks. “Those are the weirdos of the classical industry,” she insisted. “You have to be out there to do Baroque. You’re also improvising, and that’s part of the excitement. My heart is broken I can’t sing on Thursday.”

Other highlights of the festival include gospel music with Lisa Daltrius and Lawrence Craig; Louis Otey singing in a workshop performance of the opera Clarimonde, based on a tale of the supernatural by Théophile Gautier; “The Art of the Cantor,” with cantor Jack Mendelson returning to the festival stage; and the world premiére of a play, The Seven Favorite Maladies of Ludwig van Beethoven, written by Carey Harrison, who performs as Beethoven’s harried physician during the period when the composer is going deaf. The hypochondriacal Beethoven will be portrayed by festival co-organizer Justin Kolb. Program notes state, “No working piano will be harmed in the production of this play.”

For more information, tickets, and the schedule of events, see www.phoeniciavoicefest.org/.

Maria Todaro in The Barber of Seville. (photo by Violet Snow)

At opening night of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, before flamenco musicians and dancers took the stage, Assemblyman Kevin Cahill announced that the festival was in line for a state grant of $125,000. The Community Capital Assistance funds will be released in 2015.

Now in its fifth year, the music festival has proved its viability to the point of receiving, for the first time, two substantial grants. According to treasurer and Chief Financial Officer Barbara Mellon-Kolb, a grant of $90,000, administered by the New York State Council on the Arts, enabled the festival to pay artists, including the four different orchestras and ensembles backing up performers in styles from Baroque to Latin American. Another $15,000 came from the O’Connor Foundation, a program based in Delaware County for the benefit of local non-profits.

Over five days, two politicians spoke briefly at the start of each evening performance, emphasizing the economic benefits of the festival, which brought an estimated 5000 audience members last year to spend money at local businesses and also provides work for musicians, many of them from our area. In a clever gesture, two of the speakers, State Senator James Seward and Rick Remsnyder of the Ulster County Development Corporation, on their respective nights, conducted the festival orchestra in renditions of the national anthem.

Economics aside, many audience members were heard to marvel at the presence of such skilled and powerful singing voices in the tiny Catskills town. While some residents stayed home to avoid the crowds and traffic, others threw themselves into work as volunteers, with two evenings of ushering, parking guidance, or food service earning them free admission to all the outdoor mainstage events at the Parish Field. Volunteers who helped construct the stage received T-shirts reading, “Build it and they will sing.”

“I never liked opera before,” said a Woodstocker who attended the performance of The Barber of Seville, “but I was curious, so I came, and I loved it.” After two years of high drama on festival Saturday nights, this year’s audience was treated to opera buffa. The style might be compared to Betty Boop meeting Laurel and Hardy in a Shakespeare comedy, with the emotions expressed in topnotch singing voices. Phoenicia resident and festival co-founder Maria Todaro sang Rosina with aplomb, deftly applying her acting skills to the role of a sullen, dreamy, coquettish teenager.

José Todaro, Maria’s father, who had his own show on French TV, gave a performance of Mediterranean popular songs that would not have been out of place in Las Vegas. A showman with a genius for engaging the audience, Todaro also has a formidable tenor voice.

The flamenco show drew a surprisingly large crowd for a Wednesday night, as Argentine performers, backed up by an orchestra, presented an exhilarating El Amor Brujo by Manuel De Falla. The festival’s Spanish theme gave cohesiveness to the five-day event and was echoed in a sublime performance of Spanish Renaissance music at the Catholic church by the 11-member a cappella Cambridge Singers.

Local writer/director/actor Carey Harrison’s new play, The Seven Favorite Maladies of Ludwig van Beethoven, provided a superb vehicle for pianist and festival co-organizer Justin Kolb. In the role of the hypochondriacal and increasingly deaf Beethoven, Kolb played two pieces, the “Appassionata” sonata and the dramatic and often dissonant “Ruins of Athens.” While the play was funny and clever, it seemed a bit thrown-together and under rehearsed, unlike Kolb’s masterful playing. Harrison, as Beethoven’s doctor, provided the vocal component, his mellifluous speaking voice always a pleasure to hear.

I had the privilege of participating in the final performance of the weekend as a member of one of several community choirs that united to sing Misa Criolla, an Argentine folk mass, conducted by Jorge Parodi, artistic director of New York City’s Opera Hispánica. Although I will never be able to sing like the soloists I heard this weekend, I felt blessed to spend time inside a piece of glorious music, with the support of highly talented professionals. Where else but in Phoenicia?

Edie LeFever (photo by Dion Ogust)

In 1963, two young women, Edie LeFever and Eda Crist, noticed that theater productions in Woodstock always involved professionals playing the leads. They decided to create a theater group that would provide a creative outlet for the town’s many talented residents. Wanting to make their organization official, they consulted a lawyer. In his office were two other men, one from the Chamber of Commerce, who told the women that their idea would never work. “We left rather surprised and taken aback,” recalled LeFever, “and we decided we’d better get to work and present something.” The first production of Performing Arts of Woodstock (PAW) was Ionesco’s The Lesson, performed at the Café Espresso.

PAW, the longest continuously running theater group in Woodstock, celebrates its 50th year with an anniversary gala on Saturday, September 7, 4-8 p.m., at Onteora Mountain House in Boiceville. Attendees will enjoy a gourmet dinner, dancing to live music by The Phantoms, and performances of scenes from several past PAW productions.

LeFever, who is now 80 and has served as president of the board for all but a handful of years since 1964, has announced that she will retire from her position in October. She looks back with pride on the roughly 180 plays the group has performed, describing the pieces chosen as “challenging, interesting, demanding. I call what we have done ‘non-commercial fare.’ Not too many people are going to do Genet’s The Maids. We’ve done The Birthday Party by Pinter, Buried Child by Sam Shepard. And lots of original plays.”

Finances have always been problematic, since PAW eschews Agatha Christie plays and other crowd-pleasing, money-making staples of small-town theater. They rely on memberships and fundraising events to stay solvent, as well as grants, including 15 grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, based primarily on PAW’s choice of plays.

Venue is also a challenge. In its early years, PAW actors rehearsed in garages, living rooms, and basements. Performances have been held in churches, at the Woodstock Artists Association, and at the Mescal Hornbeck Community Center. For 40 years, the group used the Town Hall on Tinker Street, where three times a year, they transformed the main room into a theater for several weeks. When the building was renovated in 2012, a petition with over 1000 signatures attested to the desire of audiences to allow PAW to return after the rebuilding. However, it proved impractical to put on plays in what was now a courtroom. “We did one play there, The Columnist,” said LeFever. “Regulations for the justice court are such that all sets and lights and props had to be removed after each weekend of performances.”

The community center, although not ideally equipped, has served as a substitute. The center is next on the schedule of renovation, and this time, PAW has been allowed to give input into the plans. “According to what I’ve been told,” said LeFever, “we should have a gloriously wonderful theater space, with a stage, proscenium, curtain, lighting, and storage. It’s meant to be a multi-use center but with dividers to permit two activities at the same time.”

Meanwhile, they hope to perform at the rustic, unwinterized Byrdcliffe Theater next June and at Mountainview Studio during colder seasons.

In the early years of PAW, several branches were founded: a playwriting unit, a young people’s theater, a chorus, and an international folk dancing group. They performed 21 new plays, including pieces by Bill C. Davis, Charles Dumas, Holly Beye, John Ford Noonan, and others. Fifty-one directors have guided PAW performances, with Nicola Sheara and Warren Kelder directing the most shows. Some actors nurtured by PAW went on to professional careers.

When asked to mention a favorite production, LeFever said, “I remember liking Under Milkwood a lot. It was an ensemble, and the actors also created the sound themselves. If there was rain falling, they would make sound to create the rain falling.”

LeFever’s devotion to theater contrasts with her education in political science, philosophy, and French at Hunter College. “I enjoyed it, but I needed more action,” she mused. Later she flunked out of law school. She was formerly married to John LeFever and had three children, “who I adore,” she said. Another great love is flamenco dancing, which she studied and performed in Woodstock with Mariquita Flores. She still dances, and she directs a theater group for seniors, The Comets of Woodstock, founded by Holly Beye and Ruth Craig in 1985.

LeFever, once busy with acting and directing, has in recent years taken the role of producer, which still gives her plenty of responsibilities. “If I am one leg of PAW, Ann Washington has been the other,” she noted. Washington wears many hats, including those of treasurer and set designer. Board members have thrown themselves into preparations for the anniversary gala, including Jean Fitzpatrick, Lena Adams, Kathy Miller, who will prepare the dinner, and Robert McBroom, manager of Onteora Mountain House. Decor will be designed by Barbara Roefs, and the event chair is Adele Calcavecchio, both board members. Actress Kimberly Kay will MC. Reservations close September 1.

As for PAW’s future, LeFever is confident that the leadership of the group will “continue to be true to its backbone and not to give in to choosing plays and productions in order to make money. We should stay with what our soul is really about. Other people do other things, which is great, there’s a multiplicity of things that can be done. This is our niche and the purpose I stood up for.” 

Performing Arts of Woodstock presents its 50^th Anniversary Gala on Saturday, September 7, 4-8 p.m., at Onteora Mountain House, 96 Piney Point Road, Boiceville. Tickets are $40 and must be reserved online at www.performingartsofwoodstock.org/ or by mail. See website for details or call 845-679-7900.

Calvin Grimm (photo by Dion Ogust)

A few weeks back it was the abstract painter Calvin Grimm who was all smiles. Yes, his solo show at the Woodstock Arts Association & Museum was going well and he’d just been on the front page of this paper. But what was really turning him on was that he’d just gotten a letter announcing his receipt of a coveted Pollock-Krasner grant.

A few days later landscape collage painter Mariella Bisson was found painting a cool waterfall on a hot afternoon up in the Peekamoose area. She, too, was beaming at the news that she had also gotten a Pollock Krasner, her second in a decade (and third altogether).

At a garden party in Woodstock this past weekend, Pollock Krasner Foundation Executive VP Kerrie Buitrago talked about how many Woodstockers, and others in the Hudson Valley, were receiving the international grants, as well as how important it was for all artists to realize how critical they could be to serious artist’s careers, while moving one’s work to new levels.

“The Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s mission is to aid, internationally, those individuals who have worked as artists over a significant period of time. The Foundation’s dual criteria for grants are recognizable artistic merit and financial need, whether professional, personal or both,” reads the mission statement of the foundation, established in 1985 at the bequest of Lee Krasner, the widow of her fellow painter Jackson Pollock, who left approximately $23 million in cash, securities and art for future grants after her death.

The way the foundation works, applications from visual artists who are painters, sculptors and artists who work on paper, including printmakers and those who use photography as one of several mixed media, can apply online at any point; there are no deadlines. Applicant’s financial needs are taken into account, including catastrophic situations, and grant funds are expected to last a year. The size of grants, which Buitrago likes to keep confidential, is determined by the individual circumstances of the artist. Artists must be actively exhibiting their current work in professional artistic venues, such as gallery and museum spaces.

Overall, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, gave out 116 grants totaling $2,163,000 in the past fiscal year, ended in June. Others in the region who received grants in this period included Donald Elder, Lisbeth Firmin of New Kingston, and Jason Middleburgh of Columbia County.

Past recipients of Pollock Krasner grants have included a wealth of the region’s career artists, many of whom have been allowed to grow their work to its present status with the help of the Krasner funds. Included over the past 30 years have been Judy Abbott, Doug Alderfer, Tricia Cline, Vincent Connolly, Mary Frank, Charles Frazier, Heather Hutchison, Tatana Kellner, Anthony Krauss, Nicholas Maffei, Norm Magnusson, Henrietta Mantooth, Pia Oste-Alexander, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Segalman, Keiko Sono, Melinda Stickney-Gibson, Susan Togut, and Reinhard Voigt. Plus all those artists who spend time here but keep their main address elsewhere.

The foundation also hands out Lee Krasner Awards that are given in recognition of a lifetime of artistic achievement, which aren’t applied for but nominated. Among those recipents, on a local basis, are the late Nicolas Carone, Mary Frank, and Raquel Rabinovich.

All recipients of both grants readily acknowledge the grants’ ability to help them focus on work, and push what they do to new levels…often over several years’ worth of aid. Most recently, Bisson, Elder and Grimm each seemed somewhat abashed at their luck at getting Pollock-Krasners. Their focus on their art attested, furthermore, to all such grants’ underlying mission to help push the art, as well as its makers, forward.

Which is how civilization grows, Buitrago agreed during that recent garden party conversation.

“I am not an artist but I love being able to help artists do what they do so well,” she admitted. “It’s a benefit to all of us.”

She urged all with an interest in the Pollock Krasner Foundation and its grants to seek further information by calling 212-517-5400 or visiting www.pkf.org.

Colin Quinn

The Hudson Valley abounds in festivals, on topics as widespread as film, writers, vocal music, guitar music, folk music, luthiers, sheep and wool, arts and crafts, short plays, Shakespeare, balloons, chalk, and garlic. What makes the Woodstock Comedy Festival unusual, aside from the high-level talent it assembles, is that the proceeds go directly to two charitable organizations: Family of Woodstock programs for addressing domestic violence and the Polaris Project for prevention of human trafficking.

The second annual Woodstock Comedy Festival will be held September 19-21 and will feature Colin Quinn, who has hosted Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” created and produced a Comedy Central series, and starred in a Broadway show under the direction of Jerry Seinfeld. The weekend will include presentations by Upright Citizens Brigade and Comedy Nation, documentary films, panel discussions on comedy writing, and top-notch local comedians.

The first festival, which packed audiences into venues around Woodstock, netted over $5000 to be divided between Family and Polaris. “Last year’s overwhelming success truly shocked me,” said executive director Chris Collins, the former Woodstock town board member who came up with the idea for a benefit comedy festival. “That we pulled together a class production and made enough net profits to donate to our charities was wonderful. But this year, I am truly awed that even more professionals in comedy, production, advertising, comedy writing, film, media, and art are involved in ‘the little festival that could.’”

Director, comedian, actor, and homegrown Woodstocker Josh Ruben said the charity aspect makes his role as one of the festival’s recruiters easier. “It’s a huge draw for how we get our talent,” said Ruben, son of former Onteora High School principal Barbara Ruben. “It’s not so hard to call someone you’ve worked with professionally or know personally and ask them to show us what you got in name of kids and victims of domestic abuse.”

Ruben, now based in New York City, has mined his connections in the alternative comedy world to shape a show that’s youthful and edgy, balancing out the mature, polished style of headliner Quinn.  “We want to keep all the demographics happy,” said Ruben.

On Friday, September 19, the festival will open at the Woodstock Playhouse at 7 p.m. with Comedy Nation, hosted by political comedian and commentator John Fugelsang. “They have a political topic, and it’s run like a panel with bunch of comedians,” explained Ruben. “Each one does standup, riffing on the topic. It’s like Bill Maher meets at @midnight,” the Comedy Central show where comics give individual takes on Internet topics. Ted Alexandro, Lee Camp, Carmen Lynch, Rick Overton, and special guests will deliver their views. A VIP party follows at Cucina Restaurant.

Saturday afternoon, starting at 1 p.m., panels will be offered at the Kleinert Gallery, including How to Write for Laughs, moderated by Rick Overton, with writers for Letterman, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Inside Amy Schumer, and Funny or Die. Panel member Emily Altman, who writes for the new Tina Fey show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, said her job is “everything you’d hope it would be. Tina’s a pro, and she creates a fun environment.”

Sculpture by Marshall Baer.

Marshall Baer, who knew by the age of six he was an artist, died at age 84 in December 2011. From April to July 2011, though his body was breaking down in many ways and his hands were often unsteady, he worked for a few hours each day at his home at Rainbow Lodge in Mt. Tremper on what turned out to be a remarkable series of drawings.

Consider this one from May 2011.

The forceful, converging beam of lines breaking through the inner frame of the picture and the sinuous dancing waves of black and white are mysteriously dramatic. The juxtaposition of these shapes, the sharp, linear force knifing through the waves to the lower corner of the inner frame, as well as the double border of contrasting colors framing all this  highly energized drama — ah, Marshall was still exploring, still surprising himself, still at work.

Knowing that Marshall was weakening and close to death when he made this drawing, one is tempted to understand the border-breaking, wave-piercing beam of energy as a disruptive force of death, breaking open an inner frame, crucifying a wavelike dance of life, converging and terminating at an inner bottom edge.

But can this abstraction really be said to “mean” anything, even as sub-conscious, right brain self-expression?

Only this: that on a day in May 2011, at 84, Marshall Baer was sitting at his drawing table, paying focused attention to the energies surging within him, externalizing those energies with skills honed over the course of a lifetime.

He was surely pleased with the result. This was one of a series of drawings from that four month period to which he signed his name.  Each line and wave had emerged with flawless clarity, demonstrating that his lifelong sense of self was still intact.  He was still capable of exploring the ongoing evolution of his mind.

In July 2014, Marshall’s wife, Eve, invited one of their great- granddaughters to celebrate her birthday with an art lesson. Eve spent several hours drawing and painting with the child at the same table where Marshall was drawing.

After the young art student’s birthday session had ended, Marshall was deeply moved — perhaps by the love and skill of Eve’s teaching, perhaps by the beauty of what Lily had created, perhaps by a realization that it was now time for younger people to carry on the exploration of human creativity.

“I’m done with art now,” he said to Eve.  The sequence of drawings begun in April came to an end that day in July. And he stuck to his word.

When I visited with him after that and asked, as I always did, what he was working on now, he said, “I’m trying to live whatever time I have left with as much dignity as possible.”

Make no mistake though. To the end of his days, despite how terribly weak and sick he was, Marshall was proud and happy about his life as an artist, and about sharing his work with others, always one of his greatest joys.

His signature shape, a mandala of rounded, interpenetrating yin/yang, male/female forms, is sculptedhere (below) in soft, finely sanded balsa wood — an enduringly touching emblem of human love, and a genuinely totemic creation, inviting the caring touch of those who love it.

Marshall Baer’s last drawings, created three years ago between April and July 2011, are currently on display at the Rainbow Lodge Gallery in Mount Tremper, N.Y. Call 845 688-7761 or email evebaer@earthlink.net

Mark Seiden lives in Venice, Florida, where he writes a column for the Venice Gondolier Sun. He says, “Marshall Baer was a dear friend of mine.  When I visited his home in Mt. Tremper this July, his wife, Eve, also a dear friend, told me the story I’m sending you here.”

Randi Steele (photo by Felicia Kacsik)

Did you hear that? If you thought you heard new voices in the air on September 11 it may have been a Low Power FM radio station preparing to start full-time broadcasting in October.

“Technically, we’re on the air part time,” declared Randi Steele of Birds Of A Feather Media, (BFM) which has secured an FCC license to broadcast locally as a Low Power FM station at the 104.1 mhz frequency on the FM radio dial. “This (part-time activity) is to do ‘on-air’ testing, usually on Thursday nights from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.”

On Thursday, September 11, Steve Romine, known for his local Public Access television program at 7 p.m. on Mondays, “Woodstock Truth Squad,” broadcast a 3-hour radio program reviewing the infamous events of that date 13 years ago. Other excursions onto the air to test equipment have been unannounced.

The core of BFM also includes Steele’s partner Felicia Kacsik and Fre Atlast, who formed as a not-for-profit or 501-c3 in August 2002 as part of an effort to “keep the beat” on the Village Green on Sunday afternoons when the live drumming/music circle began fading from existence. Steele views its revival as an “iconic success” underlining the artistic character of the town.

Steele’s history as a broadcast producer and technician began in late 1973 as producer of the Alex Bennett overnight talk show on WPLJ in Manhattan, where Steele continued as Public Affairs Director after Bennett’s departure in 1976 or ‘77. During the 1980s, Steele worked for WNBC, producing a “top 40”-type music format show called “The Time Machine” until the station was sold to WFAN. Steele and Kacsik then moved to northern Maine to build the international shortwave station WBCQ, which is still in operation.

For want of operational funds, WBCQ became a “time-broker” station which sold hourly air time to various program producers, one of whom, “Behold A Pale Horse” author Bill Cooper became fairly notorious in the 1990s as a self-appointed voice of the militia movement — a political perspective sure to startle viewers of the progressively-toned program Steele has presented on the Woodstock Public Access channel for the past several years. Considered a “harmless crank” by some, who avidly opposed income tax and was among many who forecast the attacks of 9/11/01, Cooper bought his own air time. He died in a shoot-out with Arizona police later that year.

In any case, a dispute with the station owner and a feeling of isolation in Maine prompted Steele and Kacsik to return to New York City in 1999 and on to Woodstock in 2000, where they soon became involved with drums on the Green and, eventually, with the Public Access station.

Community involvement

BFM engaged in a long struggle (with several detours) to acquire a broadcasting license, which was granted in mid-February thanks to some sage advice from radio engineer Al Davis about an FCC LPFM (Low Power FM) “application window” in 2007. The group hoped to begin broadcasting in July but suffered set-backs due to dire weather conditions and contracting errors which are only now being resolved.

“This directly relates to the installation of our emergency generator,” explained Steele, “because one of the things we plan to do, during emergencies or blackouts, is be the non-commercial place where people can turn to, all the time, for information.”

The “Woodstock 104.1” station (an identity they prefer over their WIOF call letters) plans to be deeply community-involved in events of Woodstock and the surrounding area beyond music events and the like, in the spirit they perceive to be the prime intention of the Low Power FM provision.

One of the chief complaints about our ailing democracy concerns the concentration of corporate control in media and the paucity of public input into its workings. Robert W. McChesney, in his masterful analysis “Telecommunications, Mass Media & Democracy: The Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935” (Oxford, 1993) observed that “the public is passive, ignorant, and mostly nonexistent before the corporate juggernaut that dominates public policy.” This standard has held true through subsequent reforms such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which provided Low Power radio and Public Access TV to communities as compensation for a massive sale of public airwaves to corporate interests.

Analog all the way

“We have a ‘legacy’studio with turntables, reel-to-reel tape decks, and so on,” Steele beamed. “Our idea is to take it from the original format and not just get into digital MP3 sound, where the audio quality suffers. We’re endeavoring to have absolutely the highest quality sound you can get out of FM. We’ve spared no expense on that end.”

These ingredients are one cultural figment of what BFM hopes to achieve.

In terms of programming, BFM is seeking to become affiliated with the Pacifica News service, a non-commercial alternative to corporate mainstream news which constitutes the vast majority of news sources currently available in the region. This would include Amy Goodman’s popular “Democracy Now” program which is seen only occasionally in its TV form on the local Public Access station. There are also plans to broadcast the eclectic audio musings of “Radio Unnamable” from Bob Fass of listener-sponsored WBAI fame (from where Steele once briefly broadcast a “fill-in” show.) Other programming ideas are being stirred around which have not yet solidified enough to announce.

The plans, according to Randi Steele, to begin regular broadcasting are on target for next month.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

The 15th Woodstock Film Festival announced its full line-up of films for its 15th annual outing last week; already quite a few hot ticket film screenings, panel discussions and special events have started barreling towards sold-out status. And as usual, the big event — running from October 15 through 19 all around Woodstock, with added events in Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Saugerties and Kingston, is chock-full…with a full lineup of over 150 films and events taking place.

The WFF box office on Rock City Road in Woodstock is currently open from noon to 6 p.m. through Sunday, September 30, and then up and running from 9 a.m.-7 p.m. through October 6, as well as online or via phone.

Narrative features in competition include Dominique Chila and Samer Najari’s Syrian drama, Arwad; Mo Perkins’ sweet comedy The Last Time You Had Fun; Khalil Sullins’ neo-SiFi Listening; Peter Anthony’s faux documentary Armegeddon-esque The Man Who Saved the World; Terry McMahon’s Irish love drama Patrick’s Day; Judd Hirsch in the parenting saga The Red Robin, directed by Michael Z. Wechsler; Tim McCann’s haunted The White Rabbit; and Frank Hall Green’s frontier based love story, Wildlike.

Documentary Features in competition include Michael Lessac’s look at the roots of violence, A Snake Gives Birth To A Snake; Tom DeCillo’s look at NYC subway life, Down In Shadowland; Nicole Boxer’s redemption tale, How I Got Over; Ali Akbarzadeh’s Internet musing Killswitch; Thomas G. Miller’s exploration of a 40 year relationship, Limited Partnership; Alix Lambert’s look at the underside of a Midwestern town, Mentor; Andrea Kalin and Oliver Lukacs portrait of two Middle Eastern activists, Red Lines; and Håvard Bustnes’s look into the absurdities of modern economics, Two Raging Grannies.

There are also large numbers of Ultra Indie competition contenders, a host of new films from women directors, tons of short narratives and docs, as well as works in progress, along with such highlighted opening, centering and closing films as Creep, directed by Patrick Brice; Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, directed by Chuck Workman; and The Fly Room, directed by Alexis Gambis.

Also of key note is the North American premiere of CarynWaechter’s The Sisterhood Of Night, a story of friendship and loyalty set against the backdrop of a modern-day Salem witch trial…all shot on location in Kingston, as well as the new Antarctica 3D: On the Edge by Hudson valley resident Jon Bowermaster. And everything kicks off on Wednesday, October 15 with a world premiere screening of the new East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem, directed by Erez Miller and Henrique Cymerman, alongside a performance by special guest musicians David Broza and Steve Earle.

Among those getting Maverick and other awards will be director Darren Aronofsky, whose works include Noah, Black Swan, and The Wrestler, to be presented by actress Jennifer Connelly and actor Mark Duplass.

Other celebs currently slated to be on hand will be actress Courteney Cox, of Friends’ fame, with her first film as a director, and legendary South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela.

More specific info will be coming out as the big 15th Annual Woodstock Film festival approaches over the coming weeks; in the meantime, get online or head over to the box office at 13 Rock City Road in the center of Woodstock.

Call 679-4265 or visit www.woodstockfilmfestival.com for more information.

Shooting The Sisterhood of Night in Kingston.

It’s never easy to discern how a film festival film’s going to play, especially from what one reads in a catalogue. Take a flick like the new WildLike, which we described as a love story only to hear from one who’s seen it already that its actually about a teenage girl meeting a 50+ man in Alaska. Then again, Lolita was a love story of sorts, too.

What we can be sure of is that apart from the big opening, highlighted, keynote and closing films at the 15th Annual Woodstock Film Festival — running from October 15 through 19 all around Woodstock, with added events in Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Saugerties and Kingston (and a full lineup of over 150 films and events taking place) — many in attendance from around here will be looking at films shot locally, or by people who live amongst us.

Take Lacey Schwartz’s documentary Little White Lie, shot in part locally but all about its maker’s story of growing up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock only to later find out about her real father…and race. Many will know the main characters, the milieu, and themselves in the unfoldings on screen.

Then there’s Caryn Waechter’s The Sisterhood of Night, a story “of friendship and loyalty set against the backdrop of a modern-day Salem witch trial” shot in Kingston. Many saw the film being shot; some worked as extras in it. How does its dark spiral play off local settings we’re all familiar with?

“Hudson Valley Films: passionately committed to supporting regional filmmakers and film production,” is how the WFF pushes the locally created or shot fare it highlights for us, as well as industry insiders come to the festival and thinking about shooting their next features here.

Leah Meyerhoff, an English teacher’s daughter, will be showing her inaugural outing as a director, I Believe in Unicorns, a wild imaginative ride into the ways we cope with life’s challenges via fantasy. Olive-based horror maestro Larry Fessenden presents his latest piece of producing work, the geriatric terror piece Late Phases, by writer/director Adrian Garcia Bogliano…with locally shot scenes, of course.

Jazz film legend Burrill Crohn comes back with his haunting new work, Playing with Parkinsons, which follows jazz guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardi as he relearns his craft and re-meets and plays with past musical compatriots.

Even adventurer Jon Bowermaster, who followed a career writing adventure nonfiction works that took him around the world with a string of successful documentaries including the recent anti-fracking tome Dear Governor Cuomo has rounded up the Regal Cinemas in Kingston for a screening of his newest, Antarctica 3D, On the Edge.

Other locally produced short films include The Lipstick Stain, The Suffering Kind, One Armed Man and an entire Hudson Valley Docs program with works about ice yachts on the Hudson, the Catskill Park, the creative hotbed that is Red Hook’s Rokeby Farm, and dancer Susan Slotnick. Even indie veteran Nathan Silver’s latest involves a plot that brings its characters Upstate.

And yes, the panels reflect all this, from Rondout Valley producing magnate Claude dal Farra of BCDF Pictures moderating a panel on casting films, with local actress Melissa Leo, our very own Oscar gal, on board; Ron Nyswaner, Peabody award winner and writer of Philadelphia, speaking about his new work writing for Ray Donavan, as well as features; and various other writers coming in to town as much for Woodstock’s literary rep as its film life, including the great Tony Kushner and Hook author Malia Scotch–Marmo.

Jennifer Connelly and Natalie Portman will be giving an award to their director Darren Aronofsky, and the mysterious Terrence Malick might show up for the screening of his protégé A.J. Edwards’ debut feature, The Better Angels, whose tale of a young Abe Lincoln, in black and white, will serve as the festival’s closer. And it’s even grander that the man behind the opening night concert for the new Israeli music doc East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem will be local boy Steve Earle.

But getting to see ourselves on screen, even if only via our neighbors? That’s priceless.

But also very much in character for the Woodstock Film Festival.

 The WFF box office on Rock City Road in Woodstock is currently open from 9 a.m.-7 p.m. through October 6, as well as online or via phone. Program brochures are available at a variety of local outlets. Call 679-4265 or visit www.woodstockfilmfestival.com for more information.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

Hearing musicians outdoors in Woodstock is not a surprise. But it was a big surprise —startling, actually — to walk out of CVS on a Sunday afternoon and see someone playing unaccompanied Bach on a violin. A moment’s listening surprised even further: this was a very good violinist, a high class professional. A slender Japanese woman, playing superb Bach in front of a drug store!

Of course I had to investigate. After she finished the piece, we spoke briefly and she gave me her card.

Her name is Akiko Kamigawara, and the story of her coming to Woodstock is just as unusual as you would expect. She was born in Japan 22 years ago. When she was three years old, her father’s job took the family to Geneva. During the three years she spent there, she spoke French everywhere except at home and at Japanese school on Saturdays. Shortly after arriving in Geneva, she was taken to a piano teacher at the Geneva Conservatory. The teacher told her mother that the three-year-old’s hands were simply too small for the piano, and suggested she try the violin instead. She was also interested in becoming a clown, or a painter, or a cook, but only if she also played music well. She was taken to Habib Kayaleh, a student of Yehudi Menuhin who ran a private violin school. (A year later, she also began taking piano lessons from that same Geneva Conservatory teacher.) Starting music lessons so early, she learned to read music before she learned to read text. Kayaleh taught her the solid basics of violin technique: bowing, fingering, and producing rich tone.

When Kamigawara was six, the family returned to Japan. Her studies continued at the Toho-Gakuen School of Music for Children. When she was ready for high school, she was admitted to the world-famous Toho Music High School whose graduates include Seiji Ozawa and many other well-known Japanese musicians. She says she “got lucky” with her violin teachers, as she had with Kayaleh. In 2007 she won second prize at the All Japan Student Competition. Among her chamber music teachers at Toho were the members of the Tokyo Quartet, which played many times in Woodstock at Maverick Concerts. She played much chamber music at Toho, including Beethoven Quartets. Kayaleh came twice to Tokyo to give master classes, in which she participated. She also played in other master classes by internationally known musicians.

On graduating from high school, she decided to continue her studies in Belgium, long a major center of violin study and performance. She studied at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels for three years. She was happy to return to Europe, where she feels she learned greater independence.

While studying, she also played in the first violin section of the Brussels Philharmonic as associate concertmaster.

By the time she graduated from school, Kamigawara was an experienced performer and had been through some of the types of incidents that veteran performers like to relate at parties. Once, during a performance of a Beethoven Violin Sonata, the lights in the hall went out. Both she and the pianist knew the music well enough so that they were able to keep playing until the lights went back on. Also, at the Conservatory, she won the opportunity to perform Wieniawski’s Second Violin Concerto, a favorite showpiece. During the final rehearsal, the conductor made a sweeping gesture towards the orchestra and knocked the violin out of Kamigawara’s hand. She had to play the performance on a borrowed violin; hers took a year to repair.

After her graduation, Kamigawara intended to remain in Europe and start a career there. But one day she met a friend of one of her own students, Alexander Friedman, who was visiting from New York. The two took an immediate liking to each other. They visited several times in Ukraine and then in the U.S. Her last visit was intended to be short, and all her possessions except her violin were left behind in Brussels. But at the end of August, when she had been planning to return to Europe, they couple decided they wanted to stay together and get married. Friedman, who develops math instruction programs, had lived in Brooklyn, but decided to escape the crowding of the city and moved to Bearsville, where the couple now lives.

Kamigawara has not given any formal performances in the U.S. yet, “except the times I played the whole Bach Sonata outside. I hope it will happen soon. But I know it takes time to find people who will support my musical activities. I always do my best when I play the violin, even outdoors. I’ve learned many things from street performances, such as how to keep myself focused on playing even when there are distractions, how to let myself feel free to follow the ideas that arise. I feel ease in connecting with people. But I miss giving a concert ‘under the roof,’ where I find it’s a more appropriate place to share deep musical ideas with an audience. I’m also starving for chamber music, and learning more about music from other musicians.”

Weather permitting, Akiko Kamigawara will be playing on the Village Green this Friday around 5 p.m. and in front of CVS Sunday around 3 p.m. Perhaps soon we will be lucky enough to hear her “under the roof.”

Aux Iles Sanguinaires (The Sanguinaires Islands), 1966, Oil on canvas, Private collection

The heat is unusual for April. Past a lake, briskly, all is flat but the curved backdrop of low mountains. The trees have an early start to their summer cover, leaves oiled by the humidity. The only movements in the landscape — this painted-many-times landscape — are the occasional frenetic cloud of gnats, a salted or sulphured breeze, spiraling turkey vultures. A car passes by, maybe the driver waves. The road goes around several bends, several more, before hitting an intersection with a mechanic’s shop, three stately houses, and a general store. Left. Two miles past houses, a doctor’s office, an unidentifiable business whose sign is confusing to foreigners (even bilingual ones), and a gallery. A steeple at the center of town appears, an enormous white fencing foil atop a sedate, early-Renaissance facade. Not far from the red doors of the church is Café Espresso, owned by Bernard and Mary Lou Paturel. Where the sounds of children and the piano and singing are replaced by periodic bursts of steam from an espresso machine, the classical melodies of a record player. Where Malkine lights the first cigarette of the day after this three-and-a-half-mile walk, a ritual his wife understands better than any of the people who see him, pull alongside, offer him a lift. He declines, always, with the courtesy of a noble. He walked everywhere in Paris, day and night — mostly night. He would walk everywhere here.

Bonjour, Georges, tu vas bien? Bernard brings an off-white cup with flaking red lettering and a clean ashtray. He forgets to take the used one, overflowing with butts, from the table. A quarter-smile — part jawline, part eyebrow — is Malkine’s answer. The unseasonal heat of the day, the steam from the off-white cup, the smoke curling from his lip, the heap of beige cylinders branded with gold type in a pile of ash: sensory reminders of a bonfire ten years ago, in the backyard, the simplest of plans quietly performed. He could have at least saved the wood stretchers, but they made good kindling. Twenty-seven paintings set ablaze while his four-year-old daughter watched in secret. Tomorrow he leaves.*

The catalogue [for the exhibit, Georges Malkine: Perfect Surrealist Behavior, opening 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, October 11 at the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, 28 Tinker Street] started with a Post-It note and kept getting longer,” says curator and catalogue author Derin Tanyol, whose day job is as Exhibition and Programs Manager at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. “First it was an essay, then four chapters, then eight chapters. Josephine (Bloodgood, former WAAM executive director) asked me in 2009 to curate a show on Malkine. It was originally to be a show of work only from local collections, but so much important work was done in the 1920s, during his involvement with the Surrealist movement, and much of that work is in collections in Europe. I made a blockbuster list, and [for budgetary reasons] then pared it down.”

The sumptuous catalogue describes an exhibit featuring 25 paintings, six drawings and eight archival works of the enigmatic Surrealist, including photographs and writing as well as Robert Desnos’ book, Night of Loveless Nights. They serve to illuminate the life and work of a restless artist, whose vision included a hiatus from painting from 1933 to 1946, during which he worked mostly as an extra in film, worked for the French resistance, was interned in Nazi labor camps; a ‘career’ in which he shunned any sort of popularity — “at his 1927 solo show, just about everything sold…but instead of reaping the benefits of success, he got on a boat to Tahiti,” says Tanyol — and a life in which he, incredibly, twice torched huge swaths of his own work.

“Yes, he burned his paintings twice, once when he was in his 20s and hadn’t met the surrealists yet,” says Fern Malkine-Falvey, one of the artist’s three daughters (Monelle and Shayan are the others, and Gilles, his son, all still living in the area.) “The other was in the 50s in Shady, and he just realized that his paintings had become more realistic and it wasn’t who he was and what he wanted to paint. It certainly was not what he wanted to be remembered for. Derin said that you don’t often hear about artists doing this. It was sort of like a cleansing thing in his life. He had done it earlier.”

Georges Malkine (1898-1970) came to Surrealism in the early 1920s, when it was a very structured movement. Tanyol points out one of the falsehoods in the literature on Malkine — “that he was the only visual artist to sign the Surrealist Manifesto. This is repeated many times in the literature. There was no signed copy, it was not a signed document. The reality: He’s the only visual artist noted among a group of 18 others, all writers, who in André Breton’s words had committed ‘acts of absolute surrealism.’ I went into the project thinking it was so, and I looked for the document, and found it wasn’t so. History has a way of using repetition to make things into fact. There goes history, doing its thing.

“Surrealism, of all the ‘isms’ out there, has endured longer than most,” she continued. “We now have an adjective, ‘surreal,’ used regularly by people who never studied Surrealism. That suggests the whole movement has had aftershocks and waves in its wake that will endure. Other ‘isms’ — Romanticism, Impressionism — they weren’t movements. What we refer to as the Impressionist movement was in reality eight exhibitions…Romanticism had no Manifesto, no clearly defined rules as to who was a ‘Romantic’ and who wasn’t. But Surrealism was a highly organized movement starting in 1924 and lasting at least until Breton’s death in1966, and included writing, painting, film…”