Maria Whitcomb, Voice Fest intern. (photo by Violet Snow)

“We’re training a new generation, a new breed of artist,” said Maria Todaro, mezzo-soprano and executive director of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice. “They are equally balanced between the right and left side of the brain. They have the creativity and disconnect from reality that you need as an artist, and the super-Cartesianism and rationale that you need to be organized.”

As the festival brings its sixth year of world-class vocal music to Phoenicia, from July 29 to August 2, participants will include youngsters educated by the Catskills Academy for Performing Arts (CAPA), a year-round series of community programs sponsored by the festival. Eight CAPA students and several other interns will be performing and helping to run the festival, with chances to meet opera star Frederica von Stade, jazz vocalist Sheila Jordan, Emmy-nominated actor and Broadway singer Ron Raines, an American Idol finalist, a former Miss America, and a multitude of other professional musicians. This year’s offerings revolve around the theme of American music, with opera (Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men, Italian-American Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium), musical comedy (Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music), gospel, barbershop, theater, Native American music, and other genres.

At the festival office on a Monday morning, two weeks before opening day, 20-year-old intern Maria Whitcomb recalled her first year working with the festival in 2013. “I was writing a patron newsletter and program notes, and once the festival started, we were in charge of everything on stage. We helped rig lights and sound. We put up music stands and chairs, sometimes really fast.” She also performed as a non-singing extra in Rigoletto, wearing a giant prom dress and unexpectedly facing an improvised dip and kiss from tenor Barry Banks as the rakish Duke of Mantua. “I just had to roll with it,” she said. “It taught me a lot about what it takes to be a performer.”

Whitcomb, a Kingston High School graduate, is now a vocal performance major at Syracuse University, where she also studies in the first music industry program established at a U.S. college. This year, while at school, she has continued to write newsletters for the festival, as well as doing market research. One of her final projects was a 50-page marketing plan describing how the festival could work with various media outlets. On July 31, she’ll be one of the students in a sample master class, demonstrating to a festival audience how an instructor prepares singers for a concert.

Participants in the CAPA apprenticeship program receive vocal coaching and training in business skills that prepare them to work in the real world. One CAPA student, Lily Arbisser of Woodstock, who worked on supertitles for the Voicefest, now has a job doing supertitles at the Met. She will sing in the July 31 festival production of The Medium. Another young Woodstocker, Alexandra Bailey, will play the daughter of Dylan Thomas in the August 1 world premiere workshop performance of Do Not Go Gentle by Robert Manno.

Other CAPA youth programs include a children’s choir that meets weekly in Phoenicia and a five-day intensive music camp scheduled for the week before the festival. Organizer Justin Kolb, a classical pianist and festival board member, is recruiting a total of 20 kids, aged seven to 12, to study vocal music July 20 to July 24 at the Emerson Resort in Mount Pleasant. The program costs $185, with five slots available for scholarship students. For information or to register, contact Kolb at 845-486-3588 or j.kolb@phoeniciavoicefest.com.

While educating young people, the festival also benefits from their labor, paying apprentices a small stipend to help out with a variety of administrative tasks. Interns are key to a show that runs on a bare-bones budget, luring stars to enjoy the mountain air and camaraderie, while charging only $25 a ticket for most performances. A surprise benefit of having enthusiastic young interns, said Todaro, in her French-accented English, is the effect on seasoned performers. “The kids who are working with them are like puppies on flame — they’re so excited, and it reminds the established artists why they started. They arrive thinking, ‘Here I am in the sticks, doing a favor,’ and then we see them transform.”

The Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice will take place Wednesday, July 29, through Sunday, August 2, with performances at the Parish Field and other locations around Phoenicia. For details and tickets, see http://www.phoeniciavoicefest.org.

Louis Otey will sing songs by opera villains at the Voicefest Halloween event. (Courtesy of Maria Todaro)

“We want to demystify opera and counteract the idea that it’s just for the elite,” said Maria Todaro, co-founder and executive director of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, which features many kinds of music but emphasizes the organizers’ opera roots. “To demystify, we have to create a deeper relationship with the community.”

Now that the festival office occupies the entire ground floor of the 1894 House on Phoenicia’s Main Street, it has become the locus for events involving the community, from voice lessons and choir practice to a series of public gatherings that will kick off with a Halloween concert on Saturday, October 31, at 7 p.m. Todaro and her husband, baritone Louis Otey, will perform songs by opera witches and villains. Pianists Justin Kolb and Nancy Kamen will play, and the audience is invited to come in costume.

Next summer will mark the seventh annual Voicefest, which takes place over five days in early August, presenting world-class performers at a bandshell imported to Phoenicia’s Parish Field. To scratch the seven-year itch, Todaro is revisiting the festival mission statement, seeking a broader audience, and strengthening the business model of the organization.

Three new board members have been recruited to help the festival grow. Paul Llobet, M.D., executive director of Margaretville Hospital, is the new president of the board. “He and his wife are young doctors, and he’s brilliant,” said Todaro. “He went to Tibet, and he studied in Central America then gave back to the community there. They have a vested interest in developing the area.” Michael Cioffi, who has rebuilt the Phoenicia Diner into a flourishing business, is now a vice president of the festival board. With his background as a set designer for TV and film, Cioffi also brings an understanding of the performance world. David Hirschman, a New Jersey-based commercial realtor, will serve as second vice president. “David is stepping into retirement,” explained Todaro. “He wants to make a difference, and he has chosen us. We’re also creating a Vision Consortium of ten people to identify other board members for next three ears. We’re panning for gold.”

Todaro has been consulting with a range of established professionals. She sits down from time to time with Nigel Redden, who runs Lincoln Center’s Summerfest and Charleston’s Spoleto Festival. Mark Scorca of Opera America gave her “priceless advice on board-building.” Local advisors include Dave Scarpino, CEO of HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley, and Ingrid Kulick, director of the Ulster County Regional Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “They are mentoring me,” said Todaro. “It’s important to get professional guidance.”

As for the mission statement, Todaro has just asked her co-organizers to reexamine their individual goals. She is all set to express her own: “My joy is to bring the best out of people by exhorting and uplifting, and through the power of the human voice. I meet communities and individuals where they are and then push them to be even better.”

She loves Phoenicia’s rough-and-ready quality and is stimulated by the challenge of bringing high art to a wider audience while conserving what she calls the music’s “sacred aspect.” Thus, an operatic Halloween, in which Otey will sing songs by characters such as Mephisto from Faust and the villainous Dapertutto from The Tales of Hoffmann, plus some Sweeney Todd. Todaro’s characters will include the witch from Oedipus Rex, Carmen, and the devilish Lola from Damn Yankees. Jazz pianist Nancy Kamen, who recently moved to the area, will perform, and Justin Kolb, the festival’s treasurer and an internationally known concert pianist, will play Mussorgsky’s spooky and beautiful Baba Yaga. Snacks and Bloody Marys will be available.

On November 8, an afternoon High Tea Party will highlight the theme of next year’s festival, Shakespeare and the British Isles. “We have to have a meeting about clotted cream,” noted Todaro. Robert Albrecht and Tess Brewer will perform acoustic music. Cookies, scones, and tea will be served, and everyone is expected to wear elegant hats.

Other “Gatherings at 90 Main” planned for the coming months include a young talent concert, music by guitarist and songwriter David Marley, French lessons plus wine-tasting, lectures on Shakespeare, storytelling with Gioia Timpanelli, and a talk by Kolb on marketing for musicians. An opera film series will begin in January with a showing of the Indian movie Omkara, which is a Bollywood version of Otello, the opera scheduled for next summer’s festival.

The events are designed for fun and accessibility, vital aspects of relationship-building, said Todaro, adding, “We want to have an ongoing dialogue with the people who support us–not just in summer but all year long.”

“Villains and Witches of Opera” will be presented on Halloween night at 7 p.m. at the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice office, 90 Main Street, Phoenicia. The audience is invited to dress in costume. Admission is free. Seating is limited, so RSVP at 845-688-3291 or eventsat90Main@PhoeniciaVoiceFest.org

In Luc Sante’s densely-conjured and deeply researched new book The Other Paris, the now-infamous Bataclan Concert Hall is referenced in a long litany of examples of establishments that presented the entertainment beloved by the ancient city’s rough and tumble lower classes, as well as its emerging bourgeoisie and upper crusts. Back then it was the Ba-Ta-Clan, one of many cafes-concerts that drew on its neighborhood’s pre-boulevard days as the center for both Paris’ theatrical world, and much of its crime. As well as a great example of what a working, everyday but still grand place the city was in its heyday.

Sante, who lives in Kingston and will be reading at Golden Notebook at 4 p.m. Saturday, November 21, is considered by many as one of our great writers and thinkers. He teaches at Bard, is a regular in the New York Review of Books, and has built a reputation for hard-boiled analysis based on a historian’s eye for both telling idiosyncratic details and intuitive leaps of empathetic understanding that has made his first work, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, a modern classic. Yet he manages something new, and particularly apt given the past week’s tragic news, from his latest focus of a city…by shifting from an earlier nod to life’s underbelly as something cool to a newer, heartrending understanding that humanity’s glories are based on its challenges, and not just its perfections.

The man’s methodology, his very writing style, is unique and timely. Sante mixes up classic detective novel elements of hardboiled description with analytic flourishes and a way with quotes, sometimes attributed immediately, but often mixed into the flow of a narrative that gains added power, and sends one to further sources, when referenced in his notes later on. He appreciates the beauty inherent in old names, the poetry of musically-organized lists.

In a section on an ancient Parisian tradition wherein certain sections of the city were considered off-limits to officialdom and labeled cour des miracles, he described, for instance, an abandoned cloister across from the College de France…

As late as the 1840s the right of asylum was apparently still in effect in the ruins, with its four wings laid out in the sign of the cross (the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the Amen), its gardens, and its “innumerable quantity of houses — no, we’re wrong, it is a single house with many staircases, behind which lurk the sort of ignoble, sordid, stinking cesspools that are decorated with the term ‘courtyard.’” It gave shelter to a population that owed fealty “much more to the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Egyptian Empire than to the Repubic.” That is, to say, its inhabitants included buskers, street singers, sword swallowers, egg balancers, acrobats, tooth pullers, and fire eaters. More than likely its other tenants included practitioners of the short con, but the ones Privat lists are all trying for an honest living, however improvised. They were rag washers, doll dressers, makers of matches, of toy boxes, of toy parachutes, people who cut up rabbit fur to make felt, women who put wicks in lanterns, who unglued the silk of men’s hats, who made funeral wreaths from hoof scrapings, people who abridged famous plays for use in puppet theaters.”

Could one ask for a better example of the sad dignity of everyone’s attempt to find a place in this world, pre-celebrity?

Sure, there’s a structure here that elevates the very act of searching through history, or cities, for meaning as heroic, and which ends up using the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Guy DeBord’s Deconstructivist explorations of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as still-hip New Wave cinema, as examples of the culture that can arise from hidden dystopian realities. But it’s Sante’s ability to dive into the ways people slip into or react to crime, amuse themselves despite poverty and busy-ness, build societies on the fringes of moneyed worlds, and rise up to seek more that hold this work together.

The Mahgrebites, or earlier populations of Muslims who settled on Paris’ edges starting a century ago are seen as essential parts of this boiling pot; their plights rendered understandable. Just as major flare-ups of violence occur regularly throughout any community’s history. Call it liberal arts education at its most effective. And yes, the book makes one want to return, again and again, to Paris to explore what’s left after the years of boulevard building, Pompidou- and Mitterand-developments, and endless gentrification the author laments while himself wandering in search of what was, still is, and should remain as a means of keeping Paris’ humanity truly alive.

One whole chapter about “The Zone,” an area that was once where the walls were, and later the Peripherique beltway highway, shows all that made such an entity a natural outgrowth, and part of, a larger city, but is now the Banlieues, a meanly-treated and seen nightmare suburb where the poor, and Islam, has been relegated to fester. Sante’s description of what was, is full of life, a great accounting, but inevitably part of a larger thesis that reminds us how important it is to never forget parts of what we inhabit. All life, he says again and again in his work, is deserving of both attention and care.

What a long distance this man has come from a simple love for the bohemian life, as we all have had in our use, to a feel for how Bohemian rhapsodies can warp the true melodies the world offers us all.

“The game may not be over, but its rules have irrevocably changed,” Sante writes in his final chapter, which speaks to the difficulties we all face trying to take in all our lives encounter as if working towards some literary quantum theory. “The small has been consumed by the big, the poor have been evicted by the rich, the drifters are behind glass in museums. Everything that was once directly lived has moved away into representation. If the game is ever to resume, it will have to take on hitherto unimagined forms. It will have much larger walls to undermine, will be able to thrive only in the cracks that form in the ordered surfaces of the future. It is to be hoped, of course, that the surface is shattered by buffoonery and overreaching rather than war or disease, but there can be no guarantee.”

What an honor it feels like to be reading, and chiming in on Sante’s vision of Paris in this week of such conflicted meanings.

“The history of Paris teaches us that beauty is a by-product of danger, that liberty is at best a consequence of neglect, that wisdom is entwined with decay,” he concludes The Other Paris. “Any Paris of the future that is neither a frozen artifact nor an inhabited holding company will perforce involve fear, dirt, sloth, ruin, and accident. It will entail the continual experience of uncertainty, because the only certainty is death.”

Luc Sante’s reading from, and book signing for, The Other Paris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) takes place Saturday, November 21 at 4 p.m. at the Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker Street in Woodstock. Call 679-8000 or see http://www.goldennotebook.com for further information).

Larry and Teresa (photo by Mark Seliger)

It was 1978 when Larry Campbell first came to Woodstock. He was introduced to the town by the legendary John Herald who was “looking for a guy to join his band who does what I do,” says Larry. And there are not many people that can do just what he does. He’s a connoisseur’s musician, master of many stringed instruments, who first picked up a guitar at age 11. He’s recorded on countless sessions for a who’s who of every style of music imaginable, produced numerous recordings including three Grammy winners for Levon Helm. And that just touches the surface. He has toured with K.D. Lang, Bob Dylan, and along with his wife Teresa Williams, with Phil Lesh, Hot Tuna, and, of course, Levon Helm. The couple has just come off the road, performing with Jackson Browne and this past summer released their debut CD on Red House Records, eponymously titled, “Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams.”

They bring their show home to Woodstock at 9 p.m. Saturday, December 12 at the Bearsville Theater.

Teresa Williams has been singing ever since she can remember. “[It] was like learning to breathe. I don’t ever remember not singing in public. I was ‘the girl who sang’ in my community, my high school and my county.” Growing up, picking cotton in Peckerwood Point, Tennessee, which isn’t on the map, 30 minutes from Music Highway, Teresa learned music from her mother, who played piano and her father who played guitar. “Our TV was rationed. Daddy played a lot country blues, Hank Williams, Jimmy Rogers. We didn’t have records mind you — maybe five. It was pioneer mode down here,” she says, speaking from back home by phone, spending precious time with her folks.

Because of the measles, she says, she had a rare Sunday night home from church on February 9, 1964, and remembers her grandmother calling out to her, “come see these long haired boys!”

Larry’s experience of that night seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show? “As clichéd as it may be, the Beatles were the big bang for me and twenty million other people. Just like the galactic big bang it just kept expanding and expanding and expanding.”

Teresa’s big bang may have been seeing Tina Turner on TV from the Ike days. She “rocked my world,” as she says. “All that raw energy oozing out of her — my jaw dropped.” It’s no surprise that Tina was one of Teresa’s early inspirations, especially if you see her at the close of their shows, when Teresa belts out the Rev. Gary Davis’ “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.” I have not seen such raw power, control and energy of any performer since Jimmy Hendrix’s performance at the Singer Bowl in 1968.

However this is not a story about the multitude of miraculous talents of Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams. This is a love story. I have known these two for close to 25 years and have always marveled at the love and respect that they have for each other. How do they keep the love between them while working together and touring on the road for months at a time? “The music is a huge net for us,” Teresa says. “The music got us together, that’s how we met, and that’s what pulled us together in our courtship. It’s a glue for us.”

Larry agrees. “I first met Teresa in 1986 during the Urban Cowboy thing that was going on in New York City from about 1978 to 1986,” he says. “At that point every woman in New York was a country singer, because that was the trend.“ One day Larry received a call asking him if he wanted to do a gig at New York City’s famous Bottom Line. “I said ‘Oh yeah; here we go again, another woman with a guitar.’ But the first time I saw Teresa my jaw was on the floor. Then I heard her sing and it was the real thing. I mean Teresa just stood out like a beacon of what the real thing is supposed to be…That was it, I was smitten.”

After that gig it was a long year before the two saw each other again, even though Teresa was on Larry’s mind for the entire year. At one of his shows in the city when he saw Teresa again he remembers saying to the bass player, “I’m gonna marry that girl.” And so he did. “We both have this passion for the music. We really both see the music the same way.”

They are really just getting started. Larry is currently producing The Stray Birds at Milan Hill Studio with his friend and drummer Justin Guip. After that Larry has two records planned for 2016, the next David Bromberg project and a second CD for Marley’s Ghost. Larry explains that he is not going to give up producing, and will seek to find the right balance between touring and producing.

I couldn’t speak to them without bringing up Levon Helm. For the duration of what became a truly spectacular final act, a bunch of years of performing in an amazing 12 piece band with a true American icon, Levon, in his home and on the road, Larry and Teresa were right there, essential players in a grand story.

Teresa says “working with Levon — it was such a heavy thing to end up with this guy who had been a touchstone for me as a singer and actor. He was like having some of home in Woodstock for me. We would sit around the fire on Sunday nights, me, Larry, Levon and Sandy and tell tales like we did down south. And the music was real: a safe music environment, just for the music. It was a continuation of what I grew up with, and what Larry and I began down here before we married just across the river from where Levon was from.”

Larry put it succinctly. “Working with Levon was the best musical experience of our lives. It was playing great music with great people personally and professionally for all the right reasons — mainly the love of doing it.”

After the first of the year Larry and Teresa will begin working on their second CD for Red House. Larry has a couple of songs finished. “We have a couple of basic tracks from the last record that we didn’t use, there may be a song or two from the sessions with Levon that “You’re Running Wild” came out of, and I have a good handful of stuff that I have to finish.” He is hoping, as much as I, that perhaps there will be an original Teresa Williams song on the next record. “I am eternally optimistic that that may happen,” says Larry.

Coming back to Woodstock, Larry says he feels lucky. “Fans are…God bless ‘em, man. For the most part it’s rewarding to know that what you are doing is having this sort of cathartic effect on somebody and I don’t get tired of hearing it.” Part of the proceeds from Larry and Teresa’s show Saturday night will go to the Carl Perkins Center For The Prevention Of Child Abuse. How fitting Larry and Teresa making a donation to the Carl Perkins Center, as Perkins was also from the cotton patch in West Tennessee and a big influence on Teresa musically, while being a major influence on the Beatles — who inspired Larry to play music.

Larry and Teresa will also be on the road from December 11, in Montclair, New Jersey, at The Outpost in the Burbs and finishing up in Ponte Verda, Florida in January where they will be sharing the bill with Shawn Colvin, who Larry also worked with early in his career. On January 31, they take off for a sold out Cayamo Cruise, waiting room only, on the Norwegian Pearl departing from the Port of Miami. Larry will also be the featured guest at The Beacon Theater on New Year’s Eve with Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule.

I guess what makes Larry and Teresa work is that they surrendered to love a long time ago, which by the way is the name of the first song on their debut CD.

I asked Larry what it means for him to be playing Woodstock next week after being away for a few months. “Playing in Woodstock is just like having a warm blanket on us while we are up there. Sitting in front of the fire with a warm blanket and a rocking chair.” I, for one, will be sitting at that fire listening to some of the finest people that I know.

Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams will perform at 9 p.m. (doors open at 8 p.m.) Saturday, December 12 at the Bearsville Theater, 291 Tinker Street, Woodstock. Prices range from $25 to $35 and are available online at bearsvilletheater.com (some additional fees on checkout.) For more information or tickets, call 679-4406.

For more on the Carl Perkins Center For The Prevention Of Child Abuse, see http://www.carlperkinscenter.org/

Hannah Frieser (photo by Dion Ogust)

Hannah Frieser started her new job as executive director at the Center for Photography at Woodstock a few weeks back. She and her partner had found a cottage to rent in the hamlet after driving across country from the Los Angeles area, and several months residency working on a book project in Chapel Hill, NC.

Formerly a director at Light Works, a larger, slightly more established photography center in Syracuse, with ties to the university there, she’s been familiar with CPW for years, through its exhibits and currently-dormant publication, as well as a long acquaintance with the center’s former director, Ariel Shanberg.

She’s excited about her new life. Yet she’s also quick to note how, as a working artist all her life, she’s also looking to reconnect with her own photography and other projects as she settles in to Woodstock. And in doing so, fit into what Shanberg described to her, years back, as “a community of makers, and not takers.”

“I think more as an artist than as an administrator, and all that’s involved in art making is always on my mind,” Frieser says. “And yet I’ve also spent most of my working life as an administrator. I know what’s needed.”

She points out how CPW is thinking big as it approaches its 40th anniversary in 2017, and the auspiciousness of those years before such landmarks, “like 29, say, or 49.”

Frieser was born and raised in Stuttgart, Germany, to a German father and American mother. She began her schooling there but later got her BFA in photography at the University of Texas-Arlington, followed by an MFA at Texas Woman’s University, also in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Following her education years, she balanced art projects with first volunteer and then paid work with the Society of Photographic Education, for whom she eventually co-chaired some of their key conferences over a span of 12 years.

During that time, Frieser also started working as a reviewer and juror at some of the photography world’s key events, such as FotoFest, Rhubarb Rhubarb, Photolucida, and folioPORT. She served as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts for several years. Yet she also made art: series of classic silver gelatin prints exploring gender, the way we collect objects to match or make memories, maternity, and pure beauty; book projects playing on vulnerabilities, Alzheimer’s disease, how we miss loved ones; and installations ranging from explorations of skin, via images, and surface identities, via stories; or the Hispanic side of her family via a wall of printed-on tortillas.

Most recently, she and partner Charles Guice, a photo gallerist and dealer, have been developing an online initiative to promote dialogue about contemporary photography from global perspectives…meaning, Fresier adds, that they’re looking to introduce overseas talents to what’s usually seen, with a better sense of context beyond that of the contemporary art market.

It was with that last project that she was focused after leaving Light Works two years ago, taking the time to travel the nation, and a bit of the world, meeting artists and visiting arts institutions, until several issues conspired to make her look for permanent work again just as Shanberg was deciding to leave CPW and the organization’s board opened its search for a new executive director. “Keeping at one’s art is a challenge,” she said. “But taking on the Center for Photography at Woodstock is such a great opportunity.”

Frieser notes how similar the local institution is to what she spent nearly nine years with in Syracuse, from workspaces and exhibition programs to lecture and workshop series, as well as publications.

“I’ve been to Woodstock quite a bit,” she adds, noting work on CPW panels and check-ins on the Center’s exhibits, as well as several shows at now-closed Galerie BMG around the corner. “The place has a solid reputation and is a major force in the photo world everywhere. Plus, Woodstock and all its art organizations have a great legacy of collaboration. There’s a great sense of commitment to the arts.”

Frieser adds that she’s already started meeting other directors at those other organizations, and just that morning had hosted a gathering of the Hudson Valley Visual Arts Consortium, which has been building shared online collections with plans for something bigger, and bricks-and-mortar, in the coming years.

So what does CPW’s new director plan on doing as a new direction?

Frieser is quick to note, straight off, how fresh she is to the job still. And blush, slightly. But then she speaks about the importance of fundraising, and getting big projects underway, for that upcoming 40th anniversary.

“We want to make a splash,” she says, noting the possibility of getting CPW’s former photo quarterly up and running again, strengthening existing programs, and enhancing the Center’s role in the local community. “We want to work on our commitment to the Woodstock audience, but also our national and international audience.”

On that latter front, Frieser speaks about how CPW exhibits, designed to both celebrate all that photography is, as well as where it’s going, must speak to those who can’t always get to them physically to have a maximum impact. Which means better “virtual” exhibitions online.

Immediately, that means Frieser is herself putting together the Center’s next show, on book arts and photography to run February through March, as something “cozy and comfortable,” with armchairs for reading in and a look at both classic photo books and newer photo art books, as well as upping its next Photography Now exhibit scheduled to open April 16 for a run into late Spring/early summer.

“There’s a good staff here so we’re also getting our next summer’s lectures and workshops set,” she continues. “We’ve both a photo booth event that should be fun this weekend (see sidebar) and just received a rare National Endowment for the Arts grant to help with our residency program.”

And her settling into Woodstock?

“I love that you can walk to everything: your shopping, your restaurants, your galleries. If you’re looking for the ‘Woodstock experience’ you never have far to go,” she answers. “I’m also finding that everyone wants to come here; it’s such a special place in people’s hearts.”

Hannah Frieser pauses, smiles. “We have big dreams I plan to work on,” she adds.

On December 6, 2015 during the Woodstock Holiday Open House celebration I handed out a bumper sticker that read, “I could be wrong” to people on the streets, in the stores, and the galleries. As I went about, I took notes on some of what people said.

“I could be wrong and so could you,” one person suggested.

A man said, “I would not put that on my car because then my wife would say, O.K., you’ve finally admitted it.”

Another said, “If everyone thought this way, the world would be a better place.”

A woman said, “I’m going to put this on my husband’s forehead.”

I chatted with two friends. One said, “No thanks, I don’t do bumper stickers. And no: I don’t want to be wrong.” The friend said, “I’m usually wrong.” Everyone laughed.

One woman said, “I’ll put the bumper sticker in my back window. Most bumper stickers seem like the person is showing off (she made a gesture of a pompous person) but this I could put in my back window.”

A lot of people asked why I was doing this and I said I thought it would be good for the upcoming political season and that I liked a bumper sticker that spoke to the other bumper stickers. I explained that I’d observed that people with bumper stickers often have more than one and the “could be wrong” sticker would be commentary on the others. I asked people to agree to display the sticker if they accepted one. It did not have to be on their bumper but they had to display it so many people would see it.

A man said that he already had a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker on his car so he figured he should put my “could be wrong one” on one side and one that said, “I could be right” on the other.

One couple who burst out laughing together said they would use it.  They suggested a sticker that would say, “Honk if I’m wrong,” and figured that would create a lot of noise.

The sticker generated some political talk on elections and on the gun issues that had been in the news that day. Several people suggested sending to some government officials. People said that the politicians “are usually wrong.”

One fellow said, “I can’t be wrong.” And after a pause said, “I’ve never been overturned.”

Another woman said someone she knew had the bumper sticker and for the first time, recently admitted they were wrong. She wondered if it might help people do that more readily.

Of course, people joked about it in every way. “Oh, not that one, I’m never wrong…just kidding.” “I think it’s the best bumper sticker I’ve ever seen but I could be wrong about that.” One time I asked, “Will you display it?” and the answer was, “Yes, but I could be wrong.”

While standing with a group of four in a gallery, another person joined and asked what we were talking about. A woman took her sticker out and held it up for the newcomer to see. She held it up upside down. We all laughed and decided that would be the way to put it on a car.

There was occasional commentary on other quotes on the issue. One person said, “I read a quote today that said I’m not always right but I’m never wrong.”

With one fellow we got to talking about the Buddhist aspects of the sticker — that we could be wrong about everything. We agreed the bumper sticker was a good summary of a desired mentality.

I usually asked people first if they liked bumper stickers. Many people would never put them on their car and I heard all kinds of reasons why, such as the fact that their car was leased, to the fear that any opinions might anger some who would take it out on their car, to the feeling that it was a silly way to express oneself. One woman said, “I do put bumper stickers on my car but it has to be something that is very meaningful to me and this isn’t.”

Towards the end of the evening I ran into a friend who I’d seen in the beginning. She asked how it went. I said the most common reaction was it would be great for my husband/wife. She said, “I thought it would have been like me; I’m not wrong,” and she laughed.

One woman stood out as sincerely moved by the gift. She was with her daughter aged about ten and just said, “Thank you very much,” very earnestly while her daughter laughed. I walked away thinking that they really needed that.

The next evening I was at a different community event and several people said their friends had asked, “Where can I get that sticker?” It might become a movement.

I got home to this e-mail.

Thank you for the bumper sticker

I was wrong

You are right

I will put it on my car.

The Band, Canada, 1968, Rick’s uncle’s farm. Photo by Elliott Landy.

Elliott Landy stands over a stack of proofs that he used to decide what would go into his new book, The Band Photographs, 1968-1969. Each one represents what two facing pages would look like in the book, printed on glossy paper, each page a 12-inch square (coincidentally, the same size as a vinyl record album.)

“First Rachel (Ana Dobken), the editor of the book, went through 12,000 slides and negatives and contact sheets — 12,000 images and picked out ones that she thought belong in the book. Over the years I’ve had my own choices of images, so we piled everything together, the ones she found that I had never picked before, and then made proofs. There are a lot that are not in the book…look at this…wow, I haven’t seen these…there’s enough for another book!”

The book is a sumptuous volume, indeed. It’s out now, on Backbeat Books, an imprint of publisher Hal Leonard. But it represents the artistic concept of Landy alone, financed by Kickstarter, the crowd funding source, from which Landy gathered an astonishing $200,000, the most ever collected for a book of photography.

And so there they are — The Band, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel and Levon Helm, in all their youth and glory, at the height of their powers, recording their second album, titled with only their name, living and working, mostly, in Woodstock and in California. These were the days when, ignoring the psychedelic trends in music, the five musicians, along with producer John Simon (who contributes an essay to the book) turned the culture on its ear, creating a type of music that, some 35 years later, would come to be called Americana. It is music that sounds as fresh, unique and relevant today as it did the day Music From Big Pink’s vinyl was cut.

“There’s about 225 maybe, in the book. We had to break it down,” says Landy. “We printed about 600 8×11 proof prints. From that 600, I picked maybe 300 that I thought should go in the book. These are the seconds…So then, when I picked about 300 or so, I paired them together, I asked Rachel to make pairs of them…” His eye is caught by subtleties in photos that may have only once been contact sheets, ones that didn’t make the cut. “That’s the problem, I can never get away from this, it’s filled with so many nice surprises all the time. I’ve made prints for a lot of them but compared to what’s here, not very much, really. And that’s what inspired me to do the book in the first place, we open up a box and there’s these pictures I’ve forgotten about, really good photos…wow, this is really nice stuff…”

Elliott Landy

“I’ve been basically doing my own books since 1994. I have the computer capacity to do it, I know how to do it, I’ve been organizing it myself, since my book Woodstock Vision and the limited edition book on Bob Dylan for Genesis.

“If The Band Photographs, 1968-1969, was a pure photographic book only, visual, only, I would have used all these [extra] pairs (of photos). But people want to know the story, they want to read John’s text, my text, so there are some really great pairs that didn’t make it to the book.

“This is the Deluxe edition…” he says, holding up the bound copy in sealed box. “The Deluxe edition has a beautiful case and it has an 8×10 print in it from the Big Pink album cover session, where the dog came into the frame — its name was Hamlet, it was Dylan’s dog, he gave it to Rick, so Hamlet came into the picture. And its got a fold out index sheet, with contacts and captions, makes it easier to read the book.”

He shows me another one.  “This is the signature edition, signed by me, and it’s got this silly gold band on it…well, it’s not so silly…we had to figure this out so that folks who wanted to spend more money, got something special for it, and folks who didn’t have the money still got a really good, nice book. What’s important to me is that it’s exactly the same book — people who don’t have the money for the Deluxe edition, don’t have a lesser experience.” The book for $45 is the same book that retails for $500 in the Deluxe edition. “I really wanted to treat everyone the same. But I think we’re going to sell out of the Deluxe edition in a few months. I only had 300 printed.

“It’s just by chance it got out in time for Christmas. And just by chance, it’s two years since I started with Kickstarter. No publisher ever really offered me money to do a book. I just felt it was time to do a book and I knew about Kickstarter and I thought why not?” Landy had set a minimum on Kickstarter — where, if you don’t get your minimum pledged, you don’t get any of the money — at $75,000, for which he believed he could do 120 page, 9×11 inch book.

“The book got funded on  my birthday, two years ago, on December 20, it reached the minimum goal of $75,000. I remember we were sitting at the computer watching it go up…” And then it just kept on going. “I sold about 800 of the $75 (Signature series) books. If you contributed $25, you got a thank you card (with a Band photo…)”

In the end, he had 26 contributors of $1000; four contributed $3000; three more gave $5000. “I got a few people that gave me $6000 to $8000 dollars, they didn’t go through Kickstarter…”

Janice La Motta (photo by Dion Ogust)

Janice La Motta says things have moved very quickly since she was appointed Executive Director of the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum (WAAM) in October. She found a great cottage with mountain views, not far from town, and she’s experienced two major events — the Woodstock Film Festival and WAAM’s annual Fine Art Auction. “I hit the ground running and have yet to find a ‘typical’ week. It’s a lot to get used to, transitioning into a new position, but I’m older and wiser now,” she said.

La Motta brings over 30 years of fine arts experience as an entrepreneur, non-profit/arts organization leader and a practitioner of the visual arts. She was a curator at the New Britain Museum of American Art for over five years before running her own contemporary fine art gallery, Paesaggio, for 18 years. A graduate of the Hartford Art School, La Motta has served as a juror for artist fellowship grants for the CT Commission on Culture and Tourism and other entities, and continues to create and show her own visual art.

Her decision to move to Woodstock from Connecticut, where she spent most of the past four decades, was sparked by the freedom that can emanate from loss, and bolstered by happy memories of summers spent in the Lanesville area in the late ‘70s. “I loved the area then, spent a lot of time hiking around Kaaterskill Falls, and the Catskill Mountains stayed with me. The area started to come on my radar screen again, even before I learned of this position at WAAM,” she said, having recently exhibited the work of a fellow alumna of Hartford Art School, Carole Kunstadt (who lives in the Woodstock area). “Now, I’m at a watershed point in my life. My 20-year old daughter is in school and the bulk of my child rearing is done. I just lost both parents in the last year and a half. I needed a change, but I didn’t know what. I’ve never been afraid to take risks, so the uncertainty was more unsettling than the actual change.”

Since moving here, she’s experienced the palpable sense of history that’s embedded in the arts in Woodstock, and is enjoying the friendliness and artistic sensibilities of the community. “There have been a lot of funny little serendipitous moments that have characterized this move for me,” she said, like discovering mutual affinities for her favorite poet and painter — Jack Gilbert and Giorgio Morandi, respectively — during holiday party conversations. “This shared aesthetic makes me feel welcome.”

Acknowledging the challenges WAAM has recently experienced, La Motta said, “I’ve been using the word ‘re-setting’ a lot. After their longtime director left, [Josephine Bloodgood] WAAM hit a bit of a bumpy road with a director who stayed for a short tenure [Neil Trager]. This is a transitional time, a time to re-set in a lot of areas. I am fortunate to work with a great staff — they know their jobs, have professionalism, and are committed and passionate. We are being positive, and moving forward, and have a lot to celebrate with our upcoming Centennial.”

Planning for programming and celebrations for WAAM’s 2019 Centennial is already underway. La Motta wants to encourage healthy dialogue across the generations and plans to engage artists to take a look at WAAM’s extensive Permanent Collection of over 2000 works by American artists who have lived and created art in the Woodstock area. “It’s important to keep a Collection like this relative to the contextual conversations that contemporary artists are having — and I don’t mean just 25-year olds. We have some seminal 20th century artists living in the area, and I’d like to get them involved in interpreting the collection.

“This is definitely a time of reflection,” she continued. “How to mark our Centennial and how to position WAAM moving forward? We are definitely re-setting, and re-defining, but always with the interest and intent of support for the vision, while keeping it vital and current. Yes, it’s a delicate balance.”

In Connecticut, La Motta held “Pot Luck Slide Shows” which crowd-sourced images on a continuous loop as backdrop during a potluck meal and informal conversations, and she’d like to start something similar here. The gatherings allowed artists and appreciators to convene to talk about work, both in progress and finished, within the context of an artist’s larger body of work. Unlike a group show, where an artist might only have one piece included, artists have an opportunity to talk briefly about their work, and the practice of their craft. “Having a conversation about the work is a vital part of the process,” said La Motta.

“I have a sympathetic understanding of the issues that artists face. As an entrepreneur, that background is very important to me because risk-taking is one of the hallmarks of the entrepreneurial spirit. I approach challenges with the idea of not being afraid: I think about what’s possible. Miles Davis always said, ‘there are no mistakes’ and I agree with that. Taking on something new or different propels us forward and frees us up. It’s a necessary approach, and brings a fresh and welcoming perspective.”

As a younger artist, La Motta’s circle of friends included older artists who were “real guideposts,” and she especially appreciated the painters and sculptors who lived in New York City in the 50s. “You start to hear a timeless perspective embedded in their stories, and there was a nice sense of comfort — and stimulation — that came from being among more mature artists when I was younger. It put things into perspective.”

“Life is a great trip, and you stop when it’s over,” she said. “There’s a very interesting demographic here in Woodstock, and a certain part of it is older. Seeing people who continue to practice their craft, and the investment they’ve made in it, keeps it vital.”

Apricot Festival by Hatti Iles.

Hatti Iles — whose 6 foot 8 inch by 3 foot oil on wood painting “Bonfire Moon” graced the cover of Ulster Publishing’s Gift Guide a few weeks back and will be the focus of the latest exhibit at Oriole 9 starting with an afternoon reception on Saturday, January 9 —came to her singular art the way all her life has landed in her lap. By happenstance. But also as the result of her strong will to follow the whims she cares about.

“There’s a natural evolution to it all,” she says from her Plochmann Lane home nestled at the edge between forest and fields, the high face of Overlook Mountain smiling down on her collection of gardens and village-like outbuildings.

Iles speaks about how important it was to grow up in England, post-World War II, when fairy tales still seemed alive in family visits to castles, Stonehenge, and the old beech woods nearby their Surrey village that also prompted the imaginations of J.M. Barrie, George Eliot, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Douglas Adams of the Hitchhikers Guides series.

“I was always very attracted to animals and the animal world. I’ve always spent my time drawing animals, observing them, learning about them. For years I was an ‘animal correspondent’ for WDST radio,” she recalls with her lilting laugh. “But I was also always very good at copying other people’s art work meticulously, completely. Until I started to do my own.”

Iles moved to Woodstock in 1970, after coming up for a weekend to visit a friend she’d met during years of travel in Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Nepal and India: the late poet Janine Pommy Vega. She can tell charming tales of old jazz haunts in Paris, where she also attended a Malcolm X talk in the year before his assassination, and how safe and familiar Woodstock felt when she arrived and decided to stay.

“I was a true hippie,” she acknowledges. “I found work painting on leather, then denim jackets and various objects. I also did animal windows, working with cutout plywood, and then got into painting with watercolors. I’d paint on things I found, and have always been a bit of a dumpster diver.”

Iles continued by addressing the many friends and acquaintances who have helped her evolution into the artist she is today. She brings up one friend who gave her a big block of clay for Christmas one year many moons ago.

“A year went by and I didn’t do anything with it so then the following Christmas I was given yet another block of clay and felt guilty,” she remembers. “And that was it for two years; I just followed my inclination and worked in clay.”

Iles notes how she puts together her works, which mix human-like animals in what seem to be narratives, from blank canvases.

“I love just beginning to draw,” she says. “I draw at night while watching television, and then I ink in the pieces and collage them together with pieces of old wallpaper, images from magazines, and other pieces. The most fun is not knowing where a piece will take me.”

The artist adds how she hasn’t done humans yet because “there are so many of us and we are kind of boring,” but may start working some into pieces in the future. But she also notes how when people suggest she does books, she answers that she prefers concentrating on images alone, and working by herself.

It’s similar to Iles’ feelings about the business of art, about looking for more than the many Woodstock and other Hudson Valley galleries she’s shown in to date. She’d rather spend her time painting, making things.

“The workings of life take up enough time. I want my art to be as big a part of everything,” she explains. “It’s why I like the winter, when it’s quieter and there’s more time to be at home, making things.”

And yet she adds that she also enjoys setting herself challenges, and finding ways of pushing herself beyond what’s just comfortable. Iles notes how “Bonfire Moon” was a way to work with darker backgrounds, and learn to paint pure light i the form of lanterns and fire. Which she now wants to perfect even more. Or her observation that many of her pieces tend to feature her creatures meeting each other in the center of a piece; now she wants to work with them headed one direction or another.

Or with humans in their midst.

“I have re-occurring figures: mice with wings, frogs and toads,” she notes. “I also constantly note how much more I could do if I could really paint…”

But then Hatti Iles shares a dream. She’d been thinking a great deal about Edward Hoicks’ great series of Peaceable Kingdom paintings. She’s been turning back to the works’ origins in the bibles’ Book of Isaiah. And thus worrying about getting some animals she hasn’t done yet right, including we humans.

“I just love what I do so much, and the worlds I’ve created,” she adds. “I’ve had a very nice life.”

Showing alongside Iles’ intimately epic works will be a series of pieces by the late Bart Brooks, a Philadelphia-based Outsider artist. An opening reception will run from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at 17 Tinker Street on Saturday, January 9. For further information call curator Lenny Kislin at 679-8117.

Ed Sanders (photo by Alan Carey)

I’m just a poet who lives in a little town in the Catskills,” Ed Sanders says with a laugh. And, though the year has only just begun, that might be one of its biggest understatements. Activist, archivist, author, editor, founding member of the satiric rock band The Fugs, Sanders is also a noted poet, yes. But the poem he is currently working on is more than 200 pages long and focuses on the assassination of Robert Kennedy — a piece that, like most of his work, is large in scope and staggeringly ambitious. Sanders simply doesn’t do anything half-way.

That’s clearly true of his newly released biography, Sharon Tate — an immersive journey into the life of the doomed actress that also touches on everything from New Age mysticism to the moon landing to the RFK assassination (including a possible link between Tate, the Manson Family and Sirhan Sirhan.) The book will be the subject of a Sanders’ reading at 6 p.m. Saturday, January 16 at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts in Woodstock.

In all of his non-fiction writing, Sanders is big on context, focusing not just on the subject at hand, but on the period it sprung out of. He quotes liberally from newspapers and magazines of the time and details anecdotes through a variety of perspectives, sometimes allowing his sources to contradict each other.

It comes from a desire for accuracy. “The past,” he is fond of saying, “is like quicksand,” the facts of it sinking away as time elapses. So rather than just give one account of an event, Sanders prefers to present all versions, knowing that the truth probably lies in the combination. It’s a highly unusual approach that gives his books the feel of a lengthy, albeit fascinating, group discussion. And it requires mountains of research.

To write about the life and death of Sharon Tate, he dug into his own archive, which consists of 500 carefully catalogued banker’s boxes full of magazine and newspaper clippings, tapes and photographs he has been collecting for more than five decades. While he’s joked in the past about being a candidate for Hoarders, Sanders’ archive is actually very organized and has attracted the interest of several universities. “I learned how to do it from my guru Allen Ginsberg,” says Sanders, who wrote about the legendary beatnik in the epic poem, The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg, published by Overlook Press in 2000. “Allen began clipping during the Spanish Civil War in the 30s and was a Jack the Clipper all the way until he died in 1997. He taught me to clip and file.”

For his bestselling 1971 book The Family, Sanders says, he had amassed “20 or 25 boxes of research on the Manson group.” And he reopened those boxes to write about the Manson Family’s most famous victim.  “There was a lot there on Sharon Tate, and so I jumped back into that ocean of information.”

He also contacted Tate’s former friends — a task that proved somewhat daunting, considering the time that has elapsed since her murder. “She was killed at the age of 26, but she would be in her 70s now,” Sanders observes. “A lot of people she hung out with in the 60s are dead, and some of them are in various stages of mental decline. But I was able to reach out to key friends who agreed to talk to me.”

Sharon Tate seems a natural choice for Sanders to write about. Out in Los Angeles to record a record in the late 60s, he felt the shockwaves caused by the tragic murder of the actress and four of her friends in 1969. He spoke extensively with Charles Manson and his followers for The Family and has investigated several different theories as to why they may have murdered the heavily pregnant Tate and her houseguests — for all intents strangers — at her home in the Hollywood Hills on August 9, 1969.

But it was his friendship with Tate’s now deceased mother Doris that eventually made him revisit her story. “She was sort of like Demeter, who roamed the earth looking for her daughter Persephone when she was seized by the god of the underworld,” Sanders recalls of Doris, a campaigner for victims’ rights who passed away in 1992. “I had visited her and interviewed her. And she knew I was corresponding with Manson. She wanted to know the real reason why his group killed Sharon Tate. She didn’t believe the accepted theories. And so she asked me to probe into it.”

That request led to the two updates of The Family, the latter of which came out in 2002. And when he was offered a two-book deal by Da Capo press, which had also bought a memoir by Sanders on his years with The Fugs, he thought again of Doris’ request. “I was in a way obeying her mother’s hunger to know what really happened.”

For three years, Sanders set about researching the book, which is told not just from Sharon’s point of view, but from that of her family members, her husband, Roman Polanski, Hollywood friends like Jay Sebring and Steve McQueen, and, of course, the notorious cult members who invaded her property and took her life.

In the course of that research, Sanders learned of some surprising theories, the most shocking of which is the Sirhan Sirhan-Sharon Tate connection. “There was a federal investigation by the department of immigration and naturalization services, the FBI and other investigative agencies in the 1970s looking into the possibility that Manson was given a contract to kill Sharon Tate because of something she may have learned about Sirhan Sirhan,” says Sanders. “I covered it a little in my update to The Family in 2002. But this is the first time I went into it in detail because I felt like I owed it to Sharon’s mother, and also to history. I don’t know if it’s true or not. But there was an investigation, and if [what was being investigated] did happen, it was a powerful group of people that wanted Sharon Tate dead.”

It’s a haunting element in the book, and one that’s fitting for the onetime 60s radical to include. But he urges readers to draw their own conclusions — and he’s fine with them not buying into the conspiracy theory. “I am more or less retired from banging the drum too loudly,” says the Woodstock resident of 41 years, who, along with his artist/writer wife Miriam, lives a life that’s far removed from the barn-storming, East Village youth that found him jailed for protesting nuclear warheads and editing a newsletter with an unprintable title. “I’m living quietly,” Sanders says. Though indeed, that’s yet another understatement.

The Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker Street, Woodstock, hosts Ed Sanders at 6 p.m. Saturday, January 15 at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, 34 Tinker Street, Woodstock. For more information, call 679-8000.

Alison Gaylin is the author of eight published novels including the Brenna Spector suspense series, which is available at the Golden Notebook. Her next book, What Remains of Me, will be out February 23 from William Morrow.

Dante Kanter, left, and Jack Warren, founders of the Inklings. (photo by Violet Snow)

When J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were in college at Oxford in the 1930s, they belonged to a writing group called the Inklings. A group of local teens have borrowed the name for their own writing and critique group, which meets at the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock.

“There are so many good young writers around here,” said Phoenicia resident Jack Warren, who started the group with his friend Dante Kanter of Woodstock. “We wanted to utilize each other’s talents, give us a reason to keep writing and a way to start writing better.”

The two had belonged to a more informal teen writing group in 2012-14. “We shared stuff we’d written,” explained Warren. “It wasn’t a critiquing but a writing support group, to foster each other’s writing passions. Then half of us went to college and the rest of us didn’t.”

After awhile, the boys began to miss the group and decided to start over. They approached Jackie Kellachan of the Golden Notebook, where Warren has worked part-time for several years. She agreed to sponsor the group, and they put out a call for members, who were invited to submit a few pages of sample work. “It was just to make sure they were interested, rather than us actually judging them on their writing,” said Warren. “We got all different ages and writing types. We took everyone who wanted in. Even if someone’s writing is less developed, they should still belong in the group — but they were all darn good.”

The twelve group members have been meeting since November, divided into two groups of six. Each group meets once every two weeks, with Kanter and Warren attending all the meetings.

Kanter, 16, has attended the University of Iowa’s Young Writers Studio and the New England Young Writers’ Conference at Bread Loaf in Vermont. He is the son of Woodstock artists Heather Hutchison and Mark Thomas Kanter. Warren, who just turned 18, has been published in Onteora High School’s literary magazine, Esopus Supose, and the youth-written Woodstock magazine Good Life Journal. Both have written for the Woodstock Day School’s journal, the Battering Ram, for which Kanter is the managing editor, and they have contributed to special sections for the Ulster Publishing newspapers.

To structure the meetings of the Inklings, Kanter drew on his experience in writing workshops, while Warren quizzed his parents, writers Holly George-Warren and Robert Burke Warren, on their participation in writers’ groups. Usually two or three Inklings bring in a piece each week to read aloud to the group. If no one has anything to offer, they do writing exercises, help each other set goals, and talk about writing.

Those who have read their work aloud receive a focused critique from the group. “We critique in three parts,” said Kanter. “We tell them the things we like, the things we might change, and general observations. We ask the author questions, but otherwise the author is not allowed to speak during the critique.”

“It’s been great,” said Warren. “I brought in a couple of short stories, and all the feedback was really constructive. It’s also satisfying to hear someone else and be able to contribute and say what you think about it in a constructive way. We’re getting to know our friends as writers as well as people.”

“It’s good to have a space where we’re able to talk about writing,” added Kanter. “It keeps me thinking about writing, being steeped in that environment. And I’m inspired to see others work — people who are maybe working harder than me.”

“We have some 12- and 13-year-olds who bring in stellar work, week after week,” agreed Warren. “We have so much work to do!”

Warren would like to write as a career, either in film or in prose, or possibly as a journalist. He’ll be majoring in creative writing and film this fall at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Kanter isn’t sure what he wants to do professionally, but he remarked, “The ideal would be to write for a magazine, in my spare time work on the great American novel, and in the twilight of my years, release that novel to great acclaim.”

Warren laughed. “Even if we don’t write the great American novel, at least one of the twelve might, and then we can take partial credit: ‘I knew them way back when!’”

Who knows? It worked for Tolkien and Lewis.

There are two slots currently available for new members at each of the two bi-weekly Inklings meetings. To inquire about membership, contact Jackie Kellachan at jackie.goldennotebook@gmail.com.

Hannah (Small) painting by Austin Merrill Mecklem will be in WAAM’s Feb. 6 opening.

Spring cleaning, a little color on the walls and preparations for the beginning of the 2016 season have kept everyone at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum busy behind closed doors this January. On Saturday, February 6, (2 p.m.-4 p.m.) the doors open wide for the inaugural reception of the year, highlighted by Director’s Choice: The Responsive Eye, a show of 30 works from WAAM’s Permanent Collection in the Phoebe and Belmont Towbin Wing.

“It’s one of my great pleasures and privileges to have access to WAAM’s collection of over 2000 objects. There’s nothing better for me, just to be in the vault, and to be quiet and intimate with these pieces,” says Janice La Motta, Executive Director and Curator of the Permanent Collection. “It’s a privilege, as an artist and as an arts administrator, and it’s an act of discovery. There’s the kinetic part of looking at them one by one, opening boxes or pulling them out of racks. It’s the first time I’ve gone through this collection,” she adds, “and it’s an odd phenomenon. When you look at an object online or as a reproduction, your eye sets it at a certain size. You might think of a piece as being 30×40, but surprises happen when it’s larger, or smaller, than that.”

The breadth of the collection spans 60 years, from founding members to more recent artists, like Mary Frank and Ernest Frazier. A display of photographs by Harriet Tannin will feature some of the artists represented in this show.

The show reflects not only the historic nature of the WAAM collection, but also La Motta’s personal artistic aesthetic. “I have an interest in quiet works that reveal themselves more slowly, more subtly. One of them, a work on paper, is a very small, very charming little piece. And, there are some pieces that may have never been shown here, or at least infrequently. It’s not all about being recognizable, although there are some hallmarks from the collection.”

“There are certain artists that I would have enjoyed being friends with, and Ernest Frazier is one of those people,” La Motta says. “He created beautiful, expressive works.” And, a work La Motta refers to as “THE” Coffee Cup by the artist Philip Guston is one of the collection’s signature pieces. “It has been much reproduced and many of Guston’s pieces are equally exciting. When I came here, for my interview, and entered the vault, my eye immediately went to that piece on the rack. It’s small, but it’s a big painting. I couldn’t ignore the way it revealed itself,” she says. As the title The Responsive Eye implies, “I am responding to the selections I’ve made. One by one, I’m not only looking at them in a singular way, but it’s also a cumulative process. There are associations, groupings, conversations…and I’ve been jotting notes for future exhibit ideas. Themes and historical references arise, and you can’t help but look at these works of art from a lot of different perspectives.”

“I hope to include Lilith 2, a wild figurative piece by John Carroll. It’s a woman lying prone with a cloth draped over the lower part of her body. The way the pose is set up is a little bizarre, and she appears to have almost no eyeballs. It’s an eerie figure study, very surreal in its tone. It’s a sizable piece — I’m guessing 50×80 — and it’s pretty fantastic. We have lots of John Carroll’s photographs from earlier in the last century, and I think this painting is from the late 1920s,” says La Motta.

The galleries of WAAM will feature works by solo artists, young artists and founders as well. Larissa Harris, curator of The Queens Museum, is WAAM’s 2016 Solo Show Artists Juror: she has selected a handful of artists from a highly competitive field of 90 applicants, the first of whom is Greg Slick, an abstract artist who lives in Beacon. Slick’s Solo Gallery exhibit at WAAM, The Fertile Rock, features works influenced by a recently completed artist residency at Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland, where he explored Neolithic sites and studied archeological surveys.

Ellen O’Shea, President of the Barrett Art Center, has juried a show of Small Works for the Founders Gallery, and James Martin, an artist who lives in Kingston’s Lace Mill, will show still life drawings and landscapes on the Active Member Wall. Martin, whose work has been shown in several Ulster County galleries since he left New York City in 2009, works with graphite and charcoal and enjoys the obvious challenges of balancing light and shadow.

Amy Frolick, art teacher at Saugerties High School, will showcase works by her students in the Youth Exhibition Space. “Over 100 students participate in the Saugerties program and Amy asked them for their best work, so the show is student-driven,” says Beth Humphrey, Director of Education and the Museum Educator for WAAM. Humphrey, who has served in that position for the past eight years, says, “WAAM offers free programming to public and private schools that request it, but since NYS has switched to Common Core, it has impacted the program. In the past, I have worked with Kingston, Saugerties, Onteora, Coleman High School and Woodstock Day School — all in the same year — but now teachers feel they have less time,” Humphrey notes.

WAAM also partners with the Teaching the Hudson Valley initiative from the FDR Library to offer professional development for teachers. Shortly after she began her position at WAAM, Humphrey teamed up with an ESL teacher at Kingston High School to mount a show with the theme of “kids new to the U.S. One of the students from that show was incredibly talented, and applied for a solo show intended for adults — and got it — at WAAM. This student recently graduated from Cooper Union and many students who show work in WAAM’s Youth Exhibition Space go on to FIT, Purchase and other art schools. There’s nowhere else for students to exhibit in the area, except in a café or someplace like that. Most of the work exhibited comes through our outreach program in the schools,” says Humphrey, adding that young Woodstock artists will show their work at WAAM in March.

As you enter the building, you’ll notice La Motta has initiated a series of changes in the gift shop area, too. “It has suffered a bit from a lack of organization and focus, and I’d like it to be a little more reflective of our historic Woodstock artists. I’m thinking about some site-specific installations that will tie into Woodstock’s history with the WPA mural work, to carry that tradition forward. It’s one of the first things you see when you walk in the door, so I’d like to be a bit more intentional about it.” A computer station, with access to the WAAM website, Ulster Artists Online and the Hudson Valley Artists Consortium will be available too.

And, look for the first Potluck Slide Show on February 18 at 6:30 p.m. Admission is $2 (or a food dish to serve four) and the deadline to submit images for work to be included for discussion has been extended to February 7. This new forum for community, food and art is open to all, with a format designed to encourage casual creative conversations among artists and friends. “It should be a nice social evening, and I hope it catches on. It was successful in Hartford, and is a fresh, immediate, fun way for artists to engage in easy conversations about their work, especially new work,” says La Motta.

Director’s Choice: The Responsive Eye opens with a reception on Saturday, February 6 from 2 p.m.-4 p.m. and the exhibit continues through Sunday, April 30. The shows in the Solo Gallery, Founders Gallery and the Youth Exhibition Space will open on February 6 and continue through February 28. For more information, see www.woodstockart.org.

Michael Lang and Paul Green. (photo by Dion Ogust)

Woodstockers can get their first glimpse of The Woodstock Music Laboratory that’s being created out of the former Zena Elementary School by Paul Green (of the local Paul Green Rock Academy) and Michael Lang, when the Rock Academy debuts the new space with its Best of Season Show at 7 p.m. Friday, February 5.

The performance will include hits from shows throughout the Academy’s latest season, such as Folk Heroes (Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell), Jesus Christ Superstar, Led Zeppelin, and the Ramones. There will also be carnival games and food provided by Saugerties’s Miss Lucy’s Kitchen.

The space is still raw, but Green and Lang, the co-creator of the Woodstock Festivals, along with Bill Reichblum, the former dean of Bennington College, and hospitality man David Jarrett, are working toward the vision of the space as the Woodstock Music Laboratory, a post-secondary school for rock music

The Woodstock Music Lab, as envisioned, will offer a two-year, multifaceted, and comprehensive curriculum that diverts from mainstream, performance-based programs. “We have no majors. Every kid who walks in that door is learning to write, perform, produce, engineer, arrange, and market music,” said Green.

Lang stated, “This is not just for kids who want to be rock stars. This is for people who love music and want to be involved in the industry for their livelihood.” Though the Music Lab will focus mainly on rock, it will include subgenres such as punk, funk, soul, and hip-hop. In addition to exploring the numerous music-related fields, every student will also study several instruments. Green emphasized the importance of playing many instruments, adding, “Great musicians often surprise you by the well-roundedness of their musical abilities.”

To start out, Green and Lang will introduce a “pioneer year.” The Woodstock Music Lab will provide two-year scholarships to 40 promising young musicians around the country. The following year, the school will begin to take applicants, beginning the transition to a more typical application and audition process. Graduates of the Woodstock Music Lab will receive certificates in the arts, but more importantly, Green says, “[they’ll] have a résumé, a portfolio, and a set of great contacts, because [they] will have worked with the people who make the music [they] love.”

Fall opening

In July 2015, Green and Lang purchased the building and grounds of what used to be Zena Elementary School. “I’ve been working on this business for four or five years. I happen to think the universe has a plan — we were waiting for this building to become available,” said Green of their new space. The old elementary school is well-suited to Green and Lang’s vision. With corridors lined with classrooms, as well as cinderblock walls — an ideal soundproofing medium — the possibilities for collaboration and communication between rooms are endless. Additionally, the large cafeteria/auditorium holds a stage, providing a performance venue for the future students of the Music Lab, as well as guest artists. Green and Lang also have plans to convert the sizeable gymnasium into a massive recording studio akin to legendary Abbey Road. “We believe we’ll be able to attract a lot of big-name bands because there simply isn’t a big recording studio on the East coast,” said Green. Plans to house one of the largest collections of vinyl to date in the music library are also in the works.

Although the school isn’t set to open until the fall of this year, the Paul Green Rock Academy will debut the new space with its Best of Season Show.

The Paul Green Rock Academy’s Best of Season Show will take place at the Woodstock Music Lab, 1700 Sawkill Road, at 7 p.m. Friday, February 5 Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10.

Boxers by Fletcher Martin

According to the European Fine Art Foundation, (TEFAF), online sales of art reached $3.6 billion in 2014, or about 6% of all worldwide sales. “That’s a big number, and I was surprised to see it,” says James Cox, referring to a January 2016 article published by The Economist. “The trend is that people are more and more comfortable using online commerce and, with the high cost of brick and mortar, it’s cost efficient too. I am willing to bet that figure will rise,” concludes the owner of The James Cox Gallery of Woodstock.

Cox, who operates the gallery with his wife, the artist Mary Anna Goetz, is striding confidently into the ranks of those wielding virtual gavels. His upcoming Collector’s Exchange — Online Cabinet Sale will not supplant his 25-year old brick and mortar operation. Nor will it remove him from the world of live auctioneering that he has come to enjoy over the past years. It will offer collectors yet another avenue to find pieces they will cherish.

The gallery’s online auction will take place in March and the soft deadline to offer objects for consignment is February 20. Cox says he may accept items a few days beyond that date, but potential consignors take note: as of press time, the trusted curator has already been cataloguing about 125 accepted items and 200 pieces is his target number.

“Selected pieces will range in price from $50 to $1,500, and 80% of them will be fine art with the remaining 20% items that are quirky, interesting, niche-y or collectible. I’ve always done that — included items such as rare publications, ethnographic art, 3-D pieces — but they must have quality, resonance,” Cox explains. When asked if there are things he would not accept, he laughs loudly and quickly, then says, “most of the universe! There will be no Beanie Babies. No Disney characters. No above-the-couch living room art. These pieces will all be items we believe in, and feel our consignors will sell successfully. We want our consignors to be pleased with the results. That’s a major element.”

With obvious delight in his primary role as auction curator, Cox exercises a great deal of influence and draws upon decades as a well known arbiter of authenticity, quality, condition and taste. “Online art auctions are definitely a coming thing, and they’re happening. Period. Buyers have an advantage in that they don’t have to dedicate the day to going to an auction. People follow along on their iPhones, and place bids from the 4th hole of the golf course or on their boat,” he says. “And, people with a specialized or niche interest are able to participate in two or three auctions a day. If they’re interested in a particular artist, time period, nationality or any other category, they can peruse vast numbers of items from the comfort of their computer.

“I am guessing that online auction prices may be more reasonable than those generated in one-on-one live competition. When people are sitting in a room together, they are more emotionally involved. Online is perhaps a bit more dispassionate.”

Since the early 1970s, Cox has been fascinated by the fine art of auctioneering, and has lent his talents to a few select causes and organizations. He cataloged Native American arts and crafts for the forerunner of New York’s Sotheby’s (the Parke Bernet auction gallery) and the experience awakened his desire to obtain certification as an auctioneer. Following graduation from the Repperts School of Auctioneering in 1975, Cox used his new skill to raise funds for groups as diverse as the New York Heart Association (which staged lively benefit events at the 21 Club) and New York’s Dutch Treat Club (when Isaac Asimov served as that body’s president). Locally, he’ll return for the third time as featured auctioneer at Family of Woodstock’s popular Chocolate Lovers Brunch (to be held this Sunday, February 21, at Diamond Mills in Saugerties).

As co-sponsor of Woodstock Artist Association and Museum, Cox has helped raise over $150,000 for WAAM’s annual Fine Art Auction. One such event about five years ago led to his discovery of LiveAuctioneers, the Internet’s leading auction-related site and now the Cox Gallery’s best platform for online sales. “After the big auction for WAAM, we took all the things that had been turned down, and offered them online for one week only and did remarkably well when we added it all up — live auction plus online auction. The ease of doing it was almost extraordinary, and that one experiment stayed in my mind, yes.”

Cox has since gradually added an online component to his own gallery’s regular auctioning activities too, and notes a growing global involvement during live auctions. “All of our live auctions have also carried on the Internet over the past eight or nine years. Broadcasting to the world gives you an extremely broad range of buyers, people we’ve never heard from before, along with others who have been following us for years,” Cox says. “After the live auctions are over, we’re shipping items to Japan, Israel, Spain, Poland and elsewhere. We’re not switching to just online sales, but we’re adding online sales to what we’re already doing.”

Between the Christie’s and Sotheby’s that cater to the 1% of fine art collectors and eBay, which many liken to a garage sale, curated online art sales occupy an enormous and often quite discerning middle ground for serious buyers. LiveAuctioneers will offer an international reach and an audience of millions for Cox’s Collector’s Exchange — Online Cabinet Sale. And, Cox will use his own normal channels of media and marketing, and communicate with existing followers who have signed up for his own carefully culled email list. It all adds up to a wide reach for consignors and a valuable body of works to please bidders. Cox is also able to bid on behalf of regular bidders within the limits they set.

Items will be online through the month of March. The final auction lasts about one minute per lot, or, with 200 lots, about three or three and-a-half hours, says Cox. “The final few moments: that’s the exciting part. I am very much excited about this.”

The James Cox Gallery at Woodstock will be accepting objects for consignment through at least February 20, and it is anticipated that the catalog of items in Collector’s Exchange — Online Cabinet Sale will be online by March 1. During weeks of active bidding, worldwide visitors may view online “lots” with photographs and detailed descriptions, until the final online countdown and announcement of winning bids. Please call 679-7608, visit www.jamescoxgallery.com or send an email to info@jamescoxgallery.com for further information.

Maria Todaro

In the classical music world, opera singers used to be scorned for performing in other genres. “If you had recorded CD’s in the rock industry, you changed your name, and you didn’t put it in your resume,” said Maria Todaro, opera singer and co-founder of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice. “Now if you have vast experience in rock or on Broadway, you claim it.”

Todaro, enthusiastic about the potential inherent in crossover, has become a teacher of vocal music at the Paul Green Rock Academy in Woodstock. Students from the academy will open this year’s British-themed Voicefest with a performance of songs by the Beatles from their psychedelic period.

“Classical training informs your end product,” commented Green. “People can end up in very different places from where they were heading in this muddled music landscape. You have great rock musicians scoring movies, and some of my favorite rock musicians started out in classical.”

Green and Todaro met three years ago when they were both on the board of the short-lived Byrdcliffe Festival of the Arts. “We hit it off,” said Green, “because we both take music seriously, but we try not to take ourselves too seriously. Maria and I were having fun, and thought we’d like to work on something together.”

The school has two other vocal instructors, in the area of blues and rock and in the folk and Americana choral tradition. “Between the three,” said Green, “every one of our students can expect to see every one of these approaches. They all talk about singing from the diaphragm and the importance of ear training and improvisation. We think Maria’s joy for teaching is even more important than her approach.”

Students will also benefit from the chance to appear at the festival. “My entire program is dependent on having good gigs,” said Green. “To have good music, you need good end points. Maria has given us a real gift by giving us this great opportunity to perform.”

“You are giving us a great gift too,” Todaro responded, “building audiences of the future, giving kids education to keep them off the street, giving them motivation. Even if they don’t do music as a profession, they will use what they’re learning all their life.” She praised Green for having his students also work backstage to learn the nuts and bolts of presenting a performance, an aspect of the training that will be expanded by the festival appearance.

Given the theme of this year’s festival, which revolves around Shakespeare and music of the British Isles, Green said, “It was obvious the Beatles were the perfect thing to bring. My music director, Jason Bowman, had just directed a Beatles show and taken on the tougher vocal arrangements of their psychedelic period. He did arrangements of songs the Beatles had never played live, going deeper into that material. I’ll be directing the band, Maria will work with individual students, and Jason will direct the vocals.”

Based on her first two weeks of teaching at the school, said Todaro, “The kids are amazing. They’re confident. They feel like the school is a safe place where they can be themselves and meet with a family every day. Paul is a big kid — they love him, and he loves them.”

British-themed Voicefest will feature 100 voices in Otello chorus

Co-founder of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, opera singer Maria Todaro, and has just announced the highlights of this year’s festival, which will be held August 4 through 7 at Phoenicia’s Parish Field and other venues around the hamlet. The main event will be Otello, Verdi’s opera based on Shakespeare’s Othello. The opera requires a substantial choir, for which Todaro will be auditioning singers on March 8 in Woodstock — see the highlighted box for details.

“The chorus of Otello truly operates as a main ‘character’ in the opera,” said Todaro. “It’s the first voice heard after the thundering opening chord. Throughout the opera, serving variously as ‘the people,’ it helps frame the drama. We are committed to creating a chorus of 100 comprising, to the greatest extent possible, our area’s finest singers.”

Local choirs— the Phoenicia and Woodstock Community Choirs, Kairos, Ars Choralis, the Vassar College Choir — are each sending five or six of their top singers, but more are needed. Todaro explained, “It’s an eight-part chorus, and there are over 60 musicians in the orchestra, so we need substantial voices in each register. If you have a great voice, but you don’t read music, we will teach you, as long as you’re committed and willing to work hard. It’s very powerful music. We want the audience to have an emotional experience when they hear those voices, and we want the choir to have an emotional experience too.”

Otello will be presented on the evening of Saturday, August 6, and will star rising tenor phenomenon Limmie Pulliam in the title role and Eleni Calenos as Desdemona. Chorus master will be David Mayfield, and the opera will be conducted by David Wroe.

This year’s festival also includes a performance of Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter’s musical based on Taming of the Shrew. The play will star acclaimed soprano and former Miss America Susan Powell, along with her husband, Richard White, star of New York City Opera and Broadway as well as the voice of Gaston in the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast. They will be directed by Broadway veteran Lee Roy Reams.

American operatic soprano Lauren Flanigan returns with three new works by Thomas Pasatieri based on Shakespeare’s leading ladies, Desdemona, Juliet, and Lady McBeth. Local youth theater New Genesis Productions will perform Muse of Fire, a 90-minute, fast-paced romp through Shakespeare’s plays and themes.

Veteran Shakespearean actor and director Carey Harrison and concert pianist Justin Kolb will perform a stylized interpretation for piano and spoken word of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s epoch narrative poem “Enoch Arden.” Harrison will also lead a talk entitled “Hamlet Once and For All.” The festival will conclude on Sunday with a Celtic Celebration featuring a roster of artists direct from Ireland.

Tickets are available for the 2016 Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, with a 10% discount offered through May 1. The festival will be held August 4-7 in Phoenicia. Purchase tickets online at http://phoeniciavoicefest.com. For additional information, call 845-586-3588.

Alison Gaylin (photo by Franco Vogt)

Want to listen in on a lively conversation between two longtime writer friends discussing one of their brand new books? Then go to the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts at 7 p.m. Saturday, February 27 when New York Times bestselling author, Abigail Thomas, will interview USA Today bestselling author, Alison Gaylin, about Gaylin’s ninth book, What Remains of Me (William Morrow/Harper Collins).

Twenty years ago in New York City, Gaylin took a writing workshop from Thomas. Since becoming Woodstock neighbors many years ago, the two women get together often. “Abby’s great, such an inspiring and positive person. I always show my first drafts to my husband before I send them to my editor, but between finishing a book and the final copy edit, I have to look at it so closely. I was in a huge crisis with this last book, so I asked Abby to read it. She read it in one day, and was very encouraging. Whenever I’m with her, we both feel inspired and leave wanting to write.”

While writing her new psychological suspense thriller, Gaylin fed into the two dominant streams of her own obsessions. “I’ve always been fascinated by pop culture and crime. My mom was very interested in pop culture, and was a huge reader, followed all the stars and celebrities in Hollywood Reporter, Variety, People,” says Gaylin of growing up in Los Angeles. And, while no one in her family was in the movie business, its allure took hold of her, too. “When I was seven years old, I was reading Army Archerd’s column. My parents weren’t policing my reading so, at 10 years old, I read Helter Skelter. I thought it was about The Beatles, but it was so fascinating to look under that rock. I’ve been a big fan of true crime ever since then.”

Gaylin fused her dual loves — Hollywood celebrity culture and true crime — for the first time in What Remains of Me. Then, she topped off her glamorously thrilling plotline by setting the lynchpin events 30 years apart. All of this upped the ante in terms of being on the lookout for ‘the detail police.’

“I am really intrigued by the idea of ‘done with the past, but the past won’t be done with you.’ In my other books about private investigator, Brenna Spector, the past is her constant companion because she can’t forget anything (due to a condition called hyperthymestic syndrome). She’s a sad character in a way,” says Gaylin. “In What Remains of Me, the main character is 17 years old when she is convicted in 1980 of a murder. It defines her for her entire life.” Kelly Michelle Lund served a 25-year sentence and was released from prison: five years later, at age 47 in 2010, she is the prime suspect in a second brutal celebrity murder. The two time periods — 1980 and 2010 — feed into each other and Lund must still answer to the past while dealing with her present day reality. Gaylin intersperses ‘fake press’ into the telling of the story, adding a documentary feel to her gripping novel.

As a theater major at Northwestern, Gaylin wrote plays, and some even won competitions, but she chose to pursue a more journalistic career path because she deemed it more practical. No stranger to the workings of the human mind, while enrolled at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she sank deeply into her dual passions for true crime and celebrity and wrote her master’s thesis on murderously obsessed fans. “I did a lot of research and interviews — with a psychiatrist and even with a deranged fan, that was weird — and I had always read a lot about (the topic). My interest is what brought me to psychological suspense.”

Her emphasis on research and details definitely comes from being a journalist. Like many writers, Gaylin says her first drafts are usually pretty terrible. “I want to get things right, plus mystery readers are very discerning. They write to you if the details are wrong — ‘that kind of gun doesn’t have a safety’ and things like that. I spoke to a couple of LA detectives, and visited a police station — watching CSI doesn’t give you enough information and it’s not fair to the readers — so I try to get it right and do lots and lots of rewriting.”

Then, she laughs and adds, “That said, I’m just detail-oriented in my writing. I’m the kind of person who loses her keys and leaves her purse at rest stops.”

After her 14-year old daughter goes to Onteora High School in the morning, Gaylin writes, does errands and then writes some more. “Late at night is my best time to do first drafts of scenes. In the morning, I mostly re-write. I’m much clearer then. My schedule varies day to day because I go into New Jersey to work a few days a week at Life & Style magazine,” she says.

Choosing to be a writer comes with a special set of working conditions, not the least of which is polishing your work until it really shines. Gaylin says, “Everyone says, ‘persevere, keep at it’ when asked to give advice to other writers. I say you have to re-write — and the great thing is that you can re-write. Get constructive criticism from editors and agents. Don’t assume it’s perfect. Do the hard work yourself. I have never felt like a conduit, like the universe is speaking directly through me, that my writing is perfect out of the gate, and I envy people who do think that,” she continues. “My big strength is my ability to edit and re-write. If you’re a brain surgeon, you don’t have another chance to do it right. If you’re an actor performing live on-stage, you have one chance: you blow it, you blow it. But writing, you can really perfect. And when I’m stuck, I go take a hike and get away from it all. If the weather is nice, I love to do a four or five mile run/walk up Byrdcliffe and back. It clears my head.”

Gaylin embarks upon a somewhat protracted book tour between now and April, with a first stop on Wednesday at The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City before arriving in Woodstock this weekend. Then, it’s on to Vermont, California, New Orleans and Denver with some back and forth to home, too. “It’s really great connecting with readers, because you write in a vacuum. It makes it all more of a reality, more tangible. Book tours can be tiring, but that’s a good problem to have,” she says.

“The Golden Notebook is my favorite bookstore. They host wonderful events and James (Conrad) and Jackie (Kellachan) are both so well read. They’re real readers, not corporate types, and they really pay attention to the details when they plan events. They attract good crowds, lots of my friends will be there, and Woodstock’s my favorite place to read. There are so many readers in Woodstock, and The Golden Notebook is always packed every time I go into the store. Forget about those headlines about the death of the reader…”

Alison Gaylin in Conversation with Abigail Thomas, will take place at 7 p.m. Saturday, February 27, at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, 36 Tinker Street, Woodstock. For more information, call 679-8000 or see www.goldennotebook.com.

Yalin Chi

Pianist Yalin Chi, assisted by the newly renovated piano at Saugerties United Methodist Church, opened her program there on February 21 with beautiful, luminous sound and gorgeous relaxation in Rachmaninov’s song “Dreams,” as transcribed by Earl Wild. Her playing of Bach’s “Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue” was a bit pedally for me but her propulsive Fugue was very impressive. Scriabin’s music is always challenging, but Chi had no trouble with his Sonata No. 4, taking the Prestissimo second movement at a very fast tempo and making it float. I’m used to a more massive, powerful reading of Brahms’s Sonata No. 3 (in the Artur Rubinstein manner) than Chi provided, but her less volatile interpretation made its points and the way she made the second movement into a nocturne was completely convincing.

For all the virtues of this program, though, the moment I have taken away from it was Chi’s encore: Schumann’s “Träumerei,” more “Dreams.” We’ve all heard this piece many times. I cannot remember hearing it played more beautifully, with great intimacy and tenderness. This was the playing of a great artist and I’m lucky I heard it. The series continues on Sunday, March 20, as the Boston Trio plays trios of Brahms and Mendelssohn; more information on this series is always at www.saugertiespromusica.org.

The Ulster Chamber Series began its three-concert 2016 series with the venerable Manhattan String Quartet, at the Church of the Holy Cross in Kingston on Sunday, February 7. This ensemble plays Mozart, his Quartet in B Flat, K. 458, as if the music was fresh and new, with excellent balance and a particularly poignant reading of the second movement. Charles Ives’s String Quartet No. 1 gives little indication of the great revolutionary he would eventually develop into, but the ensemble gave a good performance of this unimportant music. In Brahms’s String Quartet No. 3, Op. 67, the Manhattans immediately caught the essential syncopation (always a major element in Brahms) and played the second movement with great intensity. There was nothing revolutionary about this concert, just a lot of satisfaction. The series continues March 20 with the Hermitage Piano Trio in trios of Schubert, Brahms (No. 3), and Tchaikovsky. Make sure you have a good lunch; that Tchaikovsky Trio lasts almost an hour! More info at www.ulsterchamberseries.org.

Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society offers yet another trio concert on Sunday, March 13, by the Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio. The program includes works of Jalbert, Brahms (No. 2), and Schumann. Look up www.rhinebeckmusic.org.

Bard College’s Haydn Project, a series of free noon concerts, got underway last November. But the first Tuesday noon I could manage to get to one was February 23, when an ad hoc string quartet played Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of Christ.” This isn’t even Haydn’s original version of the music, which he first wrote for orchestra and later transformed into an oratorio. But the quartet version is genuine Haydn, and if you ever needed proof of Haydn’s genius (I don’t!), his ability to write a series of compelling adagios like these would be all you need. My gratitude to Bard players Laurie Smukler and Yezu Woo (violins), Marka Gustavsson (viola), and Robert Martin (cello), and to poet Robert Kelly who wrote a series of new poems for this event and who read them so expressively. The next two events are March 8 (two string quartets and a trio) and April 19 (a trio, a quartet, and 3 partsongs). All you have to do is find the Bitó Conservatory Building and walk in, no tickets or admission price. Among other interesting Bard events coming in March are an opera double-bill on the Friday March 4, and Sunday, March 6 including Oliver Knussen’s “Higglety Pigglety Pop!” after Maurice Sendak; a jazz improvisation master class and performance on Wednesday, March 9 including Woodstocker Marilyn Crispell; and a contemporary music concert in the Music Alive! series on March 12 (all at Bitó). Bard information is easy to find at www.bard.edu/news/events.

The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra’s concert at SUNY Ulster on February 14 was redeemed by the glorious playing of Horoko Sakurazawa in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24. This was really ideal Mozart-playing, beautiful in sound, capturing the difficult combination of impulse and relaxation, and perfectly executed. The orchestra must have been inspired by Sakurazawa because its playing was the best of the entire concert. It opened with the Adagio from Khachaturian’s “Spartacus,” sentimental junk which sounds even worse when it’s somewhat out of tune. After intermission the cellos were sour in Rachmaninov’s “Vocalise” and soprano Kimberly Kahan’s singing wasn’t much better in tune. Her basic sound has improved since the last time I heard her, but she didn’t have enough breath to sing the long phrases. Some of the playing in Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” was impressive, like the pizzicatos near the opening, and to Music Director Nathan Madsen’s credit, he did his best to shape a real interpretation of this over-exposed piece. Some deficiencies in the playing didn’t help his case, though. Maybe not the WCO’s best concert ever but the Mozart made it worthwhile. The orchestra returns to SUNY Ulster in May; follow it at www.wco-online.com.

The Olive Library has two music events in March. On Saturday, the 12th, at 2 p.m., Piano Plus begins its new season with pianist Rami Sarieddne and a secret “plus” guest. This series, curated by composer George Tsontakis, has provided some outstanding performances in the past. On Saturday, March 25, also 2 p.m., the all-woman early music ensemble SIREN Baroque returns to play a program entitled “Playful Mysteries,” works of Bach, Couperin, Purcell and Gemiani played on authentic period instruments. Information at www.olivefreelibrary.org.

The Hudson Valley Philharmonic has a spectacular lined up for Saturday, March 19, at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie. The program, entitled “Aurora Borealis,” features the new work “Borealis” by John Estacio, presented with projections by José Francisco Salgado, who will join Music Director Randall Craig Fleisher for the pre-concert talk. The program also includes Jennifer Higdon’s “Blue Cathedral,” Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” Suite, and Brahms’s Second Symphony. Information on this and on the Met Live in HD series is at www.bardavon.org.

Speaking of opera, you can still catch the second performance of “We’ve Got Our Eye on You” by SUNY New Paltz’s Nkeiru Okoye, described as “Monty Python-esque,” at the college’s Studley Theatre on Saturday, March 5, at 8 p.m. After the performance I’ll be moderating a panel discussion and you can ask questions.

It’s too early to start giving details here about this summer’s Phoenicia Festival of the Voice (find all you want at www.phoeniciavoicefest.org), but I attended the press conference announcing the season and I’m looking forward not only to the opera but also the opening Beatles concert and the closing concert of Gaelic music. For that matter, the Maverick Concerts season is also available at www.maverickconcerts.org/schedule.

Presidential candidate Chris Christie in Ames, Iowa. (Copyright Jeff Jacobson)

Photographer Jeff Jacobson of Mount Tremper has had major success in his career. His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney and several other important museums. He has worked as a photojournalist for the New York Times Magazine, Time, Life, Fortune, The New Yorker, and many other magazines. He is now working on his fourth book of fine art photography. Aside from continuing to take pictures that interest him, what does he want to do most nowadays? Teach photography, especially the political work that was his entrée into professional photography.

This February found Jacobson at the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, leading a small group of students through rallies and press conferences to take shots of the presidential candidates and their supporters. “In Iowa and New Hampshire, you have a lot of freedom to move around,” said Jacobson. “There’s not so much Secret Service, if you get there early, unless there’s a sitting president running. Certain campaigns are more restrictive than others, when the candidates try to control the press. The worst this year are Hillary and Trump. They try to control every image.”

Jacobson started shooting presidential primaries in 1976 and continued through 1988. He had been a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, so he was tuned in to politics. His work took him to Boston, where George Wallace was campaigning during his third run for the Presidency. Jacobson, who had recently begun to experiment with photography, brought his camera to several Wallace rallies and was fascinated by the effects he could achieve with long exposure times and movement of the camera. When the job in Boston ended, he drove his ‘64 Volvo back to Atlanta, traded it for a VW van, and started following the primaries. He obtained a press credential from friends involved with a former underground newspaper that had morphed into a weekly paper.

“As a lawyer,” he said, “I’d saved up a little money. I had no family, and I could live on almost nothing. I wasn’t doing it to sell my pictures. I knew I needed to find my own way of seeing. That trip created a portfolio. I eventually sold some of those, became known for that work, and started getting hired.”

In 1976, when Ronald Reagan first ran for president, he was guarded by Secret Service agents, since he was running against incumbent President Gerald Ford. “I had a certain aggressive thing going on because I was less than enchanted with the candidate,” said Jacobson. “The Secret Service reflected the candidate — authoritarian.” When the agents at a Reagan event questioned his credentials, he threatened to file a lawsuit if he wasn’t admitted to the venue. After running a security check on Jacobson, the Secret Service admitted him but said they’d be keeping an eye on him. “An hour or two later,” he recalled, “they stopped me and said, ‘It’s come to our attention that you’ve been photographing all the agents in the room,’ which I wasn’t. It was just that I was not doing what other photographers were doing. I was shooting the scene, not just the candidates. But I said, ‘You win,’ and I left. They were way too paranoid for me.”

The New York Times sent him to cover Jesse Jackson’s campaign, giving him a spot on the campaign bus that traveled throughout Georgia. “We drove late at night,” said Jacobson. “He just went — he didn’t sleep. One night at 11 o’clock, on a small road, we stopped, and everyone piled into a little house. The women had cooked a huge meal for us. There were maybe ten press people on the bus. It was a magical night.”

Supporter of Ted Cruz at campaign event in Ringsted, Iowa. (Copyright Jeff Jacobson)

Shooting a primary is not restricted to the week before the vote. Jacobson often went to events months in advance, such as the Iowa State Fair, where security tends to be relaxed, and the photographers can mingle with the candidates. He was around early in the 2000 campaign of former basketball star Bill Bradley, who had been fielding questions at a press conference at UCLA. “He’d been getting stupid questions,” Jacobson remembered, “and he had a thinly veiled contempt for the corporate press. I really liked him, and I’m a basketball fan. I knew he’d been buddies with Phil Jackson, his teammate on the Knicks, who was now coaching the Lakers. This particular night, he was irritated with the press, and he took a few minutes alone standing behind the stage before going out, and I’m standing next to him. I look up at him — he’s 6’5” — and I say, ‘I’ve got a question for you. Who are you rooting for, the Knicks or Phil’s team?’ He looks around to make sure no one can hear, and he says, ‘Phil’s team — but don’t tell anyone.’”

These days, Jacobson is less interested in covering politics and more inclined to pass his experience on to students. This winter, he worked with groups of four in Iowa and in New Hampshire, including the head attorney for a major New York City bank, an Atlanta dentist, and a criminal lawyer from Boston who’s drawn to photography as he eases into retirement. Some of his students are on their way to becoming professional photographers.

For a week, they shoot every day, attending campaign stops at restaurants, colleges, community centers. “I say, ‘You edit your own pictures and choose however many you think are really good,’” Jacobson explained. “They show me those, but I also want to see everything else they shot that day. I pull out the pictures I think they should’ve chosen and the ones they should’ve left out. A lot of times, people are taking interesting photographs but are not seeing them when they’re editing. Not only are other people not seeing their best work, but they’re not growing, not understanding how they see. In that editing process is where growth comes.”

He also gives assignments. “I’ll say, ‘Tomorrow, take pictures, and when you’re through with a situation, take one step forward and shoot again.’ That’s how you learn how and when to move.”

A virtue of shooting in Iowa and New Hampshire is that photographers don’t need credentials for most events. Jacobson told his students to tell the truth, if anyone asked — that they were taking a photography workshop. At the only unpleasant experience they had in Iowa this year, two students told a Clinton staffer they were from the press. “If you’re press, they herd you into one place,” said Jacobson. “They wouldn’t let us move. I got into a pretty heated discussion with their people. I told a woman, ‘You are making all the mistakes you made in 2008, alienating the press. Look at that room — two levels of ropes between the audience and Hillary. You’re creating this image of her as remote and manipulative and not spontaneous. I’m telling you this from a position of wanting her to win. I’m not the enemy — she’s got to win, and you’re blowing it.’ Then I left.”

At a Clinton event in New Hampshire in September, one of his students took a photo of Hillary that Jacobson admired. “It really shows the toll this has taken on her,” he said. “It’s a revealing, honest picture. She wouldn’t like it.”

They didn’t get to see Trump in Iowa or New Hampshire. “We were outside a couple of his events,” said Jacobson, “but we couldn’t get in. It was packed, and I didn’t want to wait. As a younger man, I would’ve been there when the doors opened. But for me, photographically, it’s not so interesting, politics. I just happen to know how to do it. I know how to negotiate the situations. I’ve seen a lot of work that’s come out of it, and I can teach a workshop with some knowledge.”

He was, however, inspired by attending a Bernie Sanders victory party in Des Moines, which he called “a remarkable experience. The kids supporting him were so happy. I found it really moving, not the least of it because I knew it was about to get smashed.”

Because Jacobson grew up in Iowa, he enjoyed being there with students who were visiting for the first time. “They have preconceptions about these small-town evangelicals who support Ted Cruz,” he said. “They think they must be horrible people, but they’re really sweet, for the most part.”

He chooses events to shoot that he thinks will yield interesting photos, often not the ones where the major candidates are holding court. At a winery in Ames, Iowa, he took a picture of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that he may include in his next book of photographs. In his studio are two tables covered with prints laid out for consideration. “I came out of a week’s shooting in Iowa with two pictures that I think are good. That’s a good week. This is five years here.” He gestured toward the 30 prints lined up on the tables. “It’s hard to make really good pictures.”

Jeff Jacobson is available to teach at various venues, including his home in Mount Tremper. See his website, http://www.jeffjacobsonphotography.com.

Martha Frankel (photo by Dion Ogust)

The seventh annual Woodstock Writer’s Festival joins the local dialogue on the drug epidemic, offering inspiration from writers who have trod the difficult path from addiction to recovery. Executive director Martha Frankel has been considering a panel on addiction for some time. “I’ve been around a lot of recovery,” she said, “around people who are sober and happy, joyful, free. When I started thinking of it as a recovery panel, it opened up my heart and head.”

The festival, held April 7 to 10, will also feature the usual story slam, intensive writing workshops, memoir and other panels, plus keynote speaker Nancy Jo Sales, who writes about the experience of teenage girls in the Internet age; Barney Hoskyns with his tell-all of Woodstock in the 1960s; activist Gail Straub moderating a discussion on spirituality and creativity. The daytime panels will be held at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts on Tinker Street, but the evening events have been moved to the new Woodstock Music Lab, four miles east of the village at 1700 Sawkill Road, Kingston.

Michael Lang and Paul Green, who converted the former Zena Elementary School into the Music Lab, are among the sponsors of this year’s festival. The Lab will provide ample space for audience in a room that holds over 300. “It’s the most perfect place for us,” said Frankel. “We can have our cocktail parties across the hall, and I think Paul’s going to give me the principal’s office for the weekend. During the day, we’ll be at the Kleinert, so people can go out and eat and shop. We like being in town, but we want every seat to be filled for the recovery panel.”

Among the panelists on Friday night will be Tracey Helton Mitchell, a recovering heroin addict featured in the move Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street. After completing rehab in 1998, she dedicated her life to the care and treatment of heroin users. Her book The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin will be published in March. “A lot of what I hear about helping heroin addicts is ‘Don’t waste your time,’” said Frankel. “But I’m around people six months, six years, 30 years clean. I don’t want us to write off anybody. Tracy was a homeless junkie for three years. She didn’t get it the first time in rehab, the second or third time, then one day she did, and she went on to do unbelievable work. This panel is going to bring hope to so many people.” A $2500 grant from Hudson Valley Foundation for Youth Health will enable Frankel to give tickets to the event to anyone who can’t afford to pay.

Also on the panel is Kevin Sessums, who went from writing cover stories for Vanity Fair to shooting crystal meth and living on the street. I Left It on the Mountain describes his recovery by way of 12-step programs, working in a soup kitchen, and hiking the Spanish pilgrimage route Camino de Santiago. Jamie Brickhouse, author of Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir of Booze, Sex, and My Mother, talks about his journey from Texas to a high-profile career in book publishing to his near-fatal descent into alcoholism.

Frankel herself moderates the recovery panel, coming at it from her own experience as described in her memoir, Hats and Eyeglasses, about a secret gambling addiction. She also coped with substance addictions but made her way to recovery. “I’ve been an addict since the night my father di

Parents will be riveted by Saturday night’s keynote speaker Nancy Jo Sales, discussing her book American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. Sales crisscrossed the country, speaking to more than 200 girls and documenting a massive change in the way girls are growing up, with sexualization, identity, and self-esteem issues magnified through social media. She will be interviewed by Carla Goldstein, head of Omega Institute women’s leadership program and the mother of two teenage girls.

Sophie Strand, a senior at Bard College, moderates a poetry panel addressing the question “How does your local environment influence your writing?” Former Bard students Tamas Panitz and Billie Chernicoff join the renowned Robert Kelly, currently poet laureate of Dutchess County, for a spirited conversation.

The music panel is moderated by Jimmy Buff, writer and program director at WDST. He’ll be joined by British music critic Barney Hoskyns, talking about his book Small Town Talk, which details the history of the music scene in and around Woodstock. Also on the panel are local music writer Holly George-Warren, who is working on a biography of Janis Joplin; photographer Elliott Landy, famous for his photos of Dylan and the Band; and rocker Warren Zanes, author of a biography of Tom Petty. Photographer Laura Levine has donated a seldom-seen portrait of David Bowie that will be raffled off.

The spirituality panel, led by Gail Straub, explores the relationship between spiritual practice, writing, and creativity. Panelists include illustrator and calligrapher Barbara Bash, classical Indian musician Steve Gorn, yoga scholar and pianist Stephen Cope, and writer and meditation teacher Gunilla Norris.

Other events feature Ed Sanders, Robert Burke-Warren, Abigail Thomas, Bar Scott, and other authors talking about fiction, memoir, biography, and the frustrating, wonderful, mysterious process of writing.

The Woodstock Writers Festival will be held April 7-10. Daytime events will be at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, 34 Tinker Street, Woodstock. Evening sessions will be held at the Woodstock Music Lab, 1700 Sawkill Road, Kingston, off Zena Road, in the former Zena Elementary School.  For tickets, schedules, and details, see http://www.woodstockwriters.com.

Twyla Tharp in 1992. (photo by Greg Gorman)

The story reveals a lot about Twyla Tharp and why she’s one of the century’s most renowned choreographers. Sitting with a handful of reporters at the Catskill Mountain Foundation (CMF) headquarters in Hunter, Tharp described what happened when she was asked to perform at the 1984 Olympics.

“I decided I had to be in the best shape of my life,” she said. “I considered boxing the best training there is, for speed, coordination of feet and hands, stamina. But there were no women boxing in 1984.” A friend put her in touch with Teddy Atlas, protégé of Cus D’Amato, the trainer of Floyd Patterson and who discovered and trained Mike Tyson in Catskill. At first, Atlas refused to work with then 43-year-old Tharp, but she wore him down, cut off her long fingernails, took off the polish, and wrapped up her hands.

“Good trainers have horrible people around them, but they themselves have good hearts,” said Tharp. “He took me on for six months. We were jumping rope, running up and down stairs, running stairs backwards. It was a really good discipline, not just physically, but for concentration. When you’re working with stuff coming at you for 15 or 20 minutes, you’re ready for your first call in the morning.”

Tharp has brought her legendary discipline, determination, and penchant for hard work to the Catskills for a six-week residency, part of Pathways to Dance, a new eight-county, ten-venue Capital Region initiative. Led by Proctors Theater in Schenectady in collaboration with the Joyce Theater in Manhattan, the organization aims at bringing dance upstate to support the arts and enhance tourism opportunities in the area.

Nine members of Tharp’s company have come to Greene County to revive two of her early pieces, “Country Dances” (1976) and “Brahms Paganini” (1980), and develop a new work set to a Beethoven string quartet, Opus 130. A showcase of work-in-progress will be presented at CMF’s Orpheum Theater in Tannersville on Saturday, April 16, at 7:30 p.m.

Tharp finds that working upstate has advantages over her New York City routine. CMF’s Red Barn in Hunter offers plenty of space for reviewing video of the two revival pieces and working on the new material, while the Orpheum is a short van ride away for onstage run-throughs and daily class. “Even Balanchine didn’t have three spaces to work in at Lincoln Center,” Tharp mused. “And there’s no replacing air, good food, open hearts, a willingness to see something succeed, no traffic, few people.”

When asked whether dancers are born or made, Tharp replied, “A dancer is trained by their mother.” She received a solid push from her own mother, a concert pianist whose career was cut off by World War II and motherhood. “She started us all on ear training when we were babies,” Tharp recalled. “Two of us have perfect pitch, and the other two have relative pitch. I started working with a piano teacher when I was two years old. I learned to read music by color. When I hear a D, I see red, when I hear a C, I see yellow. My mother designed my name. It’s a good brand. The Tharp is real. Twila was a pig princess in the county one over from ours, in Indiana. Mother thought the ‘y’ would look better on a marquee.”

She estimated that half the dancers in her company have mothers who are dance teachers. Not only future dancers but all children can benefit from early training, which teaches such skills as coordination of movement and music, balancing the left and right sides. “No sport uses the feet the way dance does,” Tharp declared. “We, as dancers, have many more options than other athletes — except maybe Muhammed Ali. When an athlete is great, we call them a dancer.”

As a child, Tharp studied ballet, tap, hula, and twirling with the best instructors her mother could find. When she was eight, the family moved to southern California, and her parents built a 650-car drive-in theater, where she worked until she went away to college. She saw every movie and cartoon made in those years, an experience that informed her choreographic skills. “If you have a screen, there’s always movement,” she explained. “You become sophisticated about time — how long can a frame hold, when do you have to go to the next scene, fades, cross-dissolves, all those transitions. When there are kisses, you know you have to get back to the snack bar because you’re about to have a rush on hot dogs.”

Tharp majored in art history at Barnard College, continuing her romance with the visual. In New York City, she hobnobbed with artists — Frank Stella, Carl Andre, Ellsworth Kelly — and choreographed in the vein of 1960s modern dance, never in the context of a proscenium stage. The following decade, Robert Joffrey saw her work and invited her to choreograph a ballet, leading to work with such stars as Baryshnikov. She did films with Milos Forman: Hair, Ragtime, Amadeus. In the 80s, she began choreographing Broadway shows and writing books, producing an autobiography and two books on creativity and collaboration, drawing on her growing body of experience.

The key to collaboration is to work with people you trust, said Tharp, “people who know what they’re doing, who there’s a real connection to, and you can be really clear about what you need — because guess what, they’re really busy people.” Her 1986 piece In the Upper Room was scored by Philip Glass, who was “doing a thousand things at one time,” recalled Tharp. “I said, ‘Just do this — write me three and a half minutes every day before breakfast.’” In the Upper Room was the first piece choreographed by a woman to be performed by the Bolshoi Ballet.

It’s important to be prepared when dealing with potential collaborators: “You want to be sure you really mean what you’re asking for, because you might get it. You have to do homework in advance.” When she wanted to work with Billy Joel’s music, she put together a 20-minute video of dance moves to his songs. He liked it, gave her permission to use his work, and sent her all his recordings. As she listened for a way to create flow and unity around the music that scored the 2002 piece Movin’ Out, “I heard a story line, which was essentially, ‘Sing to me, muse, of the rage of Achilles.’ I had been working on Surfer at the River Styx, based on Euripides, and in a way, Movin’ Out is The Bacchae. Men at war, valiant men, men who are maimed, who suffer and have to find a new life. It’s painfully tedious, and it’s always the same story.”

After all, said, Tharp, “There are only two stories: Romeo and Juliet, and Jack and the Beanstalk — that’s it.”

Twyla Tharp will present a showcase of work-in-progress at Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Orpheum Theater, 6050 Main Street, Tannersville, on Saturday, April 16, at 7:30 p.m. For information and tickets, visit http://www.catskillmtn.org.