BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Music in the Woods Since 1916 Maverick Concerts’ 98th summer of Music in the Woods celebrates the centenary of composer Benjamin Britten, with performances of all of his works for string quartet as well as the music of his idols and contemporaries.
• The Maverick Festival: A brief history • A Message from Our Director • Britten & Copland in Woodstock • Solitary Cello Accompanied by Nature • Restoration of the Hall • Betty Ballantine Remembers • Runaway Horse
We Are Proud To Support The Maverick Concerts David Gubits Marilyn Janow Dr. Ed Leavitt Lawrence Posner Susan Rizwani David F. Segal Sondra Siegel Jane Velez Willetta Warberg
Hervey White Bolton Brown
Zaidenlig
Table of Contents 2
Board of Directors 2013 Summer Schedule
3
The Maverick. A Brief History
4 - 5
A Message from Music Director Alexander Platt
6 - 7
Britten and Copland in Woodstock
8 - 9
Bach for a Solitary Cello Accompanied by Nature
10 - 11
Hervey White Announces a New Concert Series
12 - 13
The Maverick Revival: Six Phases and Counting
14 - 15
The 1976 Restoration of the Hall
16 - 18
Betty Ballantine Remembers
19
John Cage at the Maverick
20 - 21
Yamaha Selected as Official Piano by Maverick Concerts
22 - 24
Runaway Horse From a 1986 Woodstock Times Article
25
Free Young People’s Concert
Contributors
Writers: Mary Fairchild, Alexander Platt, Randy Angiel, Ph.D.; Hervey White, Cornelia Rosenblum, Allan Kozin for The New York Times, Abigail Robin for the Daily Freeman, Betty Ballantine Editor: David F. Segal Graphic Design & Production: Katie Jellinghaus
Photos & Illustrations
Fletcher Martin
Cover: Maverick at Night; Dion Ogust Britten, Copland & Pears Courtesy of The Britten Pears Foundation. Inside Front Cover: Simon Russell. Hervey White by Bolton Brown courtesy of the Woodstock Artist Association & Museum
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Board of Directors
2013 Summer Schedule
SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 11 AM Young People’s Concert Elizabeth Mitchell & Family
CHAIRMAN
David F. Segal
VICE-CHAIR
David Gubits
TREASURER
Lawrence Posner
SECRETARY
Dr. Ed Leavitt
BOARD MEMBERS
Marilyn Janow
Susan Rizwani (Former Chair)
Angela Schapiro
Sondra Siegel
Jane Velez
Willetta Warberg
Sculptor of the Maverick horse, John Flannagan and a very young Linda Sweeny
CHAIR EMERITA Cornelia Rosenblum
Saturday, August 3, 6:30 PM Jazz at the Maverick Perry Beekman & Friends Songs of Rodgers and Hart
SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 4 PM Miró String Quartet with Melvin Chen, piano Beethoven, Schumann, Elgar
Sunday, August 4, 4 PM Leipzig String Quartet • Quartet Monuments Beethoven, Lutoslawski, Franck
SATURDAY, JULY 6, 11 AM Young People’s Concert Eribeth Piano Trio
Saturday, August 10, 6:30 PM Jazz at the Maverick • Fred Hersch, piano; Anat Cohen, clarinet
SATURDAY, JULY 6, 6:30 PM Actors & Writers Noteworthy Shorts: The Music Plays
Sunday, August 11, 4 PM Trio Solisti • Kindred Souls Schubert, Britten, Copland, Shostakovich
SUNDAY, JULY 7, 4 PM Shanghai Quartet Beethoven, Shostakovich, Dvořák
Saturday, August 17, 6:30 PM Steve Gorn & Friends Indian Classical Music
SATURDAY, JULY 13, 6:30 PM Actors & Writers • Emoteworthy Shorts: The Theatre Plays
Sunday, August 18, 4 PM BORROMEO STRING QUARTET Beethoven, Bach, Dvořák
Sunday, July 14, 4 pm Voxare String Quartet • Kindred Spirits: Britten, Rorem, Tchaikovsky
Saturday, August 24, 6:30 PM Zuill Bailey, cello; Robert Koenig, piano • The Britten/Rostropovich Connection: Britten, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev
Saturday, July 20, 11 am Young People’s Concert Ilya Yakushev, piano Sunday, July 21, 4 PM Jupiter String Quartet with Ilya Yakushev, piano • Britten’s Mentor Haydn, Brahms, Britten, Bridge Saturday, July 27, 6:30 PM Chamber Orchestra Concert Alexander Platt, conductor “A Portrait: Britten at Woodstock” Paul Appleby, tenor; Aurea Ensemble Britten, Mozart, Purcell, Bridge; poetry by Auden, Isherwood, Spender, and Woolf Sunday, July 28, 4 pm Escher String Quartet Late Swallows Elgar, Britten, Birtwistle, Beethoven Saturday, August 3, 11 AM Young People’s Concert Marc Black, vocals and guitar 2
Sunday, August 25, 4 PM Ensō String Quartet Lyric Masters: Britten and Verdi Saturday, August 31, 4 PM A Concert for the Friends of Maverick • Pedja Muzijevic, piano Haydn, Chopin Saturday, August 31, 8:30 pm Jazz at the Maverick • Marc Black and Warren Bernhardt Sunday, September 1, 4 PM Daedalus Quartet, Rufus Müller, tenor • Britten and the Romantics: Schubert, Britten, Smetana Saturday, September 7, 6:30 PM Jazz at the Maverick • Dan Tepfer, piano: The Goldberg Variations in Jazz Sunday, September 8, 4 PM American String Quartet • The Grand Finale: Haydn, Shostakovich, Beethoven
The Maverick Festival A brief history by Mary Fairchild
serious musical circles against American musicians. “Everything musical had to have the European hallmark,” he said. “Woodstock was a beginning for many young American musicians…. There were few other such opportunities elsewhere in the country.” Gently encouraged by Hervey White, first-chair symphonists and established soloists began coming to Woodstock. Hervey described that first season: “Last Sunday nearly four hundred people, including several farm wives and two millionaires, heard Beethoven, Arensky, Debussy, and Chopin.” In 1924, Hervey commissioned John Flannagan, a brilliantly talented, iconoclastic, and penniless sculptor, to carve the iconic Maverick horse. Using an ax as the major tool, the entire monumental statue was carved from the trunk of a chestnut tree in only a few days. “Hervey had a way of getting things done,” according to Mr. Barzin. And Hervey’s vision redounds to our felicity. His music chapel still stands at the foot of a wooded rise, improved here and there, buttressed, trussed, reroofed. Artists don’t spend the whole summer here, but rather swoop in for a day or a weekend. The resident spirits are perhaps more Bach than bacchante, but appreciative audiences still express their delight by stamping their feet on the tympanum of the old wooden floor. Allan Updegraff observed in 1916, “Inside, the afternoon twilight, let in by the mass of windows… was softened by ivory-tinted walls. Big uprights of unbarked logs paneled the room, and… supporting log frameworks sprang, with a Gothic suggestion, to the high, curved, unpainted pine roof. Green light from the woods outside winked everywhere through the chinks of the single-thickness walls.” Some things haven’t changed a bit. A summer thunderstorm gets your attention and ups the ante for a string quartet. A moth startles with its flutter. Birdsong fills the caesurae between movements, the non-silence invoked by John Cage in 4’33”, four-and-a-half minutes (and a bit) that premiered at Maverick in 1952.
“The Maverick” was the collective description for the colony of unabashed artists that flourished at the edge of Woodstock’s artistic main drag from 1905 until about 1944: the term was both pejorative and affectionate. The Maverick Festival was an annual bacchanale conceived—by Hervey White, founder and artistic elemental of The Maverick—as a Bohemian carnival to be held on the Colony’s grounds under the August full moon. The idea of a music season to be held conjointly with the general Festival shenanigans dates from 1915, when Hervey had the idea of holding classical music performances as a way of raising money. (This seems an extraordinary notion today, when we fight for every penny of support.) The initial purpose was to pay for a well to be dug, but the festival and concerts were such a success that the whole undertaking became the main fund-raising vehicle for building projects, taxes, and other operating expenses for the Colony. In 1929 the New York Herald Tribune reported 6,000 people in attendance, all misbehaving to a greater or lesser degree. When Hervey White got serious about his idea of ongoing music in the summer woodland, he had in mind “chamber music in a rustic music chapel, among tall trees at the foot of a hill… I secured a farm, with a proper hill and tall trees, and a farmhouse that would do to live in until I could build something better; but I needed food, a music hall, and musicians.” This was according to Allan Updegraff, novelist of Woodstock, who went on to say, in that year of 1916, that Hervey’s music chapel, except for the “fifty six-paned windows in the front gable, and the prolongation of the roof along one side to form a huge porch, … resembled nothing so much as a sizeable new barn.” Leon Barzin, founder, conductor, and music director of the National Orchestral Association and the original music director of the New York City Ballet, worked on the hall when he was 16 or 17, according to an article he wrote in 1975, and the project was completed entirely by volunteers, without the intervention of an architect or paid laborers. In the early days of music at the Maverick, the regular season for orchestral musicians was more like an academic calendar: 32 weeks, with four months of the year open to the questionable pleasures of unemployment. Mr. Barzin wrote that in the early years of the 20th century, there was an insidious prejudice in
“Last Sunday nearly four hundred people, including several farm wives and two millionaires, heard Beethoven, Arensky, Debussy, and Chopin.”
I wonder whatever became of Hervey’s well... Acknowledgements: Leon Barzin, Allan Updegraff, Cornelia Rosenblum, all at www.maverickconcerts.org. The Jean Lasher Gaede and Elizabeth “Fritzi” Striebel Archive, courtesy of the Center for Photography at Woodstock.
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A Message from our Music Director
dissimilar Aldeburgh Festival, back in Britten’s childhood home of East Anglia, on the North Sea coast. Britten’s centenary year also marks the bicentennials of Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi. Benjamin Britten was to the twentieth century what Wagner and Verdi were to the nineteenth century and Mozart to the eighteenth. Britten was the great lyric composer of his time: Richard Strauss was his only equal. Billy Budd, Death in Venice, The Turn of the Screw, Peter Grimes — these operas have entered the standard repertoire of every great opera house. Britten stands with Bartók, Shostakovich, Janá˘cek, and Schoenberg in the pantheon of twentieth-century chamber music, and it gives me great pleasure to say that this summer all of Britten’s important music for string quartet will be performed. As is our joyously rigorous custom at the Maverick, Britten’s music will of course be celebrated in context, as part of the rich tapestry of composers who so profoundly influenced him: Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky. We’ll hear music by Britten’s mentor, the influential teacher and composer Frank Bridge, and by Sir Edward Elgar, whose music the young Britten so fashionably rejected in the 1930s but later came to embrace. And we’ll revisit those composers who were actually colleagues and friends, such as Copland and Shostakovich (several of whose chamber-music masterpieces make a welcome return to the Maverick this summer). Britten throughout his life was called to enshrine the role of the “other” in human society, a point of view we will find during the season in the music of Antonín Dvorák; Erwin Schulhoff, that doomed master of the Weimar period; and the Maverick’s good friend, the brilliant jazz pianist Fred Hersch. A program by cellist Zuill Bailey will celebrate the link between Britten and the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The Daedalus Quartet will premiere, with the great German tenor Rufus Müller, their new version of Britten’s song cycle Winter Words, settings of poems by Thomas Hardy. Our annual chamber-orchestra concert, in which Metropolitan Opera tenor Paul Appleby and the Aurea Ensemble will recreate the atmosphere surrounding Les Illuminations, a brilliant setting of the words of Arthur Rimbaud that Britten composed in that long-ago Woodstock summer. By the end of the season I think you’ll agree that, as with Mozart’s, Britten’s music is among the great “mixers” of the chamber-music repertoire. I have to admit that my own link with the music and the figure of Benjamin Britten is at the end of the day somewhat personal. I idolized Britten and Pears as a young music student, and I still remember the day, in 1976, when the choir teacher came into the classroom to announce that Britten had died. As a youngster, I had a fond if contrarian love of tradition and, growing up in the Episcopal Jennifer Girard
Dion Ogust
Alexander Platt
Dear Friends, I am honored once again to welcome you to a summer at Maverick Concerts — 98 years old and as wonderful as ever. Every Maverick summer is special, and 2013 is no exception, since it will celebrate the centenary year of one of the towering musicians of the twentieth century, Benjamin Britten — who, with his companion, the tenor Peter Pears, spent the summer of the fateful year of 1939 here in Woodstock in the company of Aaron Copland. I think we can safely assume that Britten visited our beloved music chapel in the woods that summer; the spirit of the Maverick Concerts was at one with his own, as just a few years later he and Pears founded the not4
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Church, sang and fell in love with Britten’s sacred music. While a student at Yale, I traveled to Aldeburgh, where Basil Coleman’s austerely dignified production of The Rape of Lucretia showed me what opera and chamber music could be. While at Cambridge, I reconstructed Britten’s chamber version of Mahler’s fourth symphony, a commission from Marion Thorpe, the daughter of Erwin Stein, who was Britten’s Viennese mentor. I also took leave of my senses long enough to lead one of the first productions of Owen Wingrave, Britten’s horrendously difficult and neglected opera inspired by international reaction to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. And in my recent twelve-year stint at Chicago Opera Theater, I had the privilege of leading both Death in Venice and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in their Chicago premieres, galvanizing experiences I’ll always be grateful for. I keep thinking that I’ll take my leave of Britten, musically speaking — that he will prove to be a musical vestige of adolescent anglophilia, which I’ll finally shed in middle age. But I’ve been blessed with enough years to have developed love and appreciation for the English purely on their merits, so to speak. And it is true that once you make friends with an Englishman, he is your friend for life. I expect that I’ll never weary of Benjamin Britten’s colossal genius, warts and all. I hope that some of his music’s power — indeed, its shining humanity, which both Mozart and Verdi would have loved — will move and delight you this summer. And this year especially, your Maverick experience will be made all the more comfortable by the refurbishments and improvements to our beloved concert hall, a testament to the tireless work and idealism of the Maverick’s gifted volunteers — something with which Britten, no pushover, would have been mightily impressed.
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Britten & Copland 1939 in Woodstock, New York
Under the clouds of war in the summer of 1939, Woodstock hosted a group of young men seeking some quiet in order to compose; among them were Aaron Copland, Benjamin Britten, and Britten’s partner, the tenor Peter Pears. This turned out to be a momentous summer for them: Copland’s ballet Billy the Kid was premiering, and the New York Philharmonic performed Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge on July 12 — to a “great success,” Britten wrote, “requiring two bows on stage.” During this sojourn, Britten composed two pieces for tenor, horn, and strings using Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations as text. He also finished Young Apollo, a work for piano and strings that premiered that August for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Copland and Britten had became friends the prior year, when Copland visited Britten in England. Britten later referred to Copland as his “cheery father,” as Copland was thirteen years his senior. They maintained a correspondence, and when Britten and Pears decided to come across the Atlantic to Canada, Copland suggested the pair come to New York where, coincidently, the World’s Fair was under way. Copland decided he needed to leave the bustle of the city to compose, so he came up to Woodstock and rented a cabin with his partner, Victor Kraft. He invited
by Randy Angiel, Ph.D.
Britten and Pears to join him and Kraft, and found a nearby cabin for the two Englishmen to rent for two months. Britten and Pears took the train from New York City on July 4th and arrived to find Woodstock bustling with visitors. After settling in, they developed a routine of composing, swimming, sunbathing, and playing tennis. Britten wrote: “Our days are generally something like this: Get-up — 8:30 (with luck) Finishing getting breakfast & washing up & cleaning up — 10:30 Then work, with an interval for cold scrappy lunch, until — say, 4:30 Then we walk to Copland’s cottage, where we bathe in stream and sun till 6:00
“...Then we walk to Copland’s cottage, where we bathe in stream and sun ‘till 6:00— Then tennis perhaps till 7:30 or 8:00— Then the big meal of the day at a snack-bar called Trolley Car; and after that either here or at Copland’s we gossip or play piano…” 6
Then tennis perhaps till 7:30 or 8:00 Then the big meal of the day at a snack-bar called Trolley Car; and after that either here or at Copland’s we gossip or play piano…” According to Britten, that summer was exceptionally warm, and he spent much time in the swimming holes around Woodstock; he wrote that he “could not imagine the tropics much hotter.” Britten became a regular at the tennis court, and when he left Woodstock in September, his new friends were asking for him at the tennis court and at Deanie’s Trolley Car in the evenings. The only complaints Britten had of his summer in Woodstock were having to clean his cottage, the intense summer heat, and Woodstock’s “too many artists,” although he found that “one could avoid them.” Given their proximity to Tanglewood, the group made frequent trips there for the summer concerts, both in 1939 and the following year. Copland introduced Britten to Serge Koussevitsky, the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a connection Britten had been eager to make. Two years later, Koussevitsky conducted Britten’s Frank Bridge Variations. Copland arranged the trips and meetings, and he wrote to Britten the following summer apologizing that all the cheap tickets to a Tanglewood evening were sold out—he could only get higher-priced ones at the “horribly expensive” price of two dollars apiece. The prospect of war weighed heavily on the minds of both Britten and Pears, and they wondered if they needed to return to England, despite their pacifism. Copland was still in Woodstock when war was declared on September 3. He wrote to Britten on the 6th, saying: “I’ve been wondering where you are in this miserable world! I keep marveling how it has all turned out just exactly as you feared it would. The question is: do you have to go back? I mean —- does the Conscription go into immediate effect? Because if not —- I think you absolutely owe it to England to stay here… After all, anyone can shoot a gun —- but how many can write music like you?” As the summer came to an end, Pears was due to return to England, but Britten convinced him to stay longer so the two could remain together. They returned to England in 1942, and appealed for and were granted conscientious objector status. After the war, they founded the Aldeburgh Festival which, like the Maverick, has blossomed and is still going strong. Britten and Copland remained lifelong friends after their summer together in Woodstock.
“After all, anyone can shoot a gun— but how many can write music like you?”
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Bach for a Solitary Cello Accompanied by Nature
WOODSTOCK, N.Y., Aug. 31— Associations between the structural logic of Bach’s music and notions of the mystical perfection of nature may be fanciful and romantic, but many a writer has made this poetic link. Others have offered a more rationalist view of Bach and nature as polar opposites, the music’s supreme artifice and intellectual rigor contrasting starkly with nature’’s randomness and chaos. Listening to Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi play three of Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello here in a rustic, barnlike concert hall that was partially open to the wooded countryside, it seemed not to matter which model was correct. The salient point was that whether they are counterparts or antitheses, Bach and nature have a peculiar way of enhancing each other. Mr. Tsutsumi, a Japanese cellist who won the International Casals Competition in Budapest in 1963 and is on the faculty of Indiana University, played the oddnumbered Suites on Saturday evening and returned on Sunday to round out the set. He was the guest of Maverick Concerts, a series that was started here in 1916 by Hervey White, a poet and novelist who dreamed of turning his farm into an arts center. Maverick’s concert hall, which was restored in 1977, has retained its roughhewn character, and it boasts fine acoustics despite its open back. It has also seen plenty of history. Portraits of soloists and chamber groups from decades past hang on its walls, and it was for a Maverick
Bach & nature have a peculiar way of enhancing each other
September 4, 1997 By Allan Kozinn for
“Mr. Tsutsumi’s technique and sound were equal to the task, and the several hundred people on hand were rightfully as dazzled by the performance as by the music itself.”
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concert that John Cage composed his silent “4’33’’” in 1962. Accounts of that work’s first performances note that nature took a hand, filling the silence of the premiere with the sound of rustling wind and lending the patter of rain to the next day’s presentation. Nature was more deferential during Mr. Tsutsumi’s Bach performance, the cool overcast afternoon affording plenty of atmosphere and little distraction. Mr. Tsutsumi’s accounts were thoughtfully conservative in their adherence to mainstream tradition, in the sense that he kept clear of interpretive eccentricity, but clearly did not regard Bach’s notation as a straitjacket. There was considerable subtlety here, though: each ornament seemed chosen to suit the context. Mr. Tsutsumi found and magnified the traits that give the suites their independent character, and after establishing those qualities in each of the Preludes, he maintained them consistently through the dance movements that follow. The Fourth, which opened the concert, was a picture of regal grace. In the Second, which held the central place on the program, he focused more on the virtuosic demands of the music, making the most of its implied counterpoint and chordal passages. And the Sixth, not unexpectedly, was offered as the culmination of the set, with the regal qualities of the Fourth transformed into grandeur— the Prelude, after all, has a more monumental quality—and the virtuosity of the Second given a more pointed edge. Mr. Tsutsumi’s technique and sound were equal to the task, and the several hundred people on hand were rightfully as dazzled by the performance as by the music itself.
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Hervey White Announces a New Concert Series
FROM A PROMOTIONAL BOOKLET, CIRCA 1913: On the afternoon of the ninth of July, in the Maverick Hall, on a side road between the villages of Woodstock and West Hurley, will begin a series of entertainments unique among the musical events of our country. These concerts will be devoted to that highest class of all music, known as chamber music, and will be given by a small group of musicians elected especially for that purpose... a string quartet and a pianist, with occasional singers to assist them, and possibly, though rarely, an artist, or group of artists, from without. The programmes will be announced abroad in advance and patrons will do well to watch for them in The Kingston Daily Freeman and other local papers, or on the bulletin boards of club houses or hotels. Those who are seriously interested in music will desire to attend regularly each concert if they live within motoring or driving distance, or, more fortunately, near enough to walk. For the personnel of the quartet is unusual, and has only been secured through influential friends to the Maverick scheme. The first violin of the quartet is Mr. Edward Kreiner, formerly member of the famous Marteau Quartet of Berlin, which is known throughout continental Europe and one of the three great organizations of that character. Mr. Engelbert Roentgen, lately solo ’cellist for The Imperial Court Opera, in Vienna, is an artist of the very highest rank. Hardly had he been a week in America, when he was secured as solo ’cellist for The New York Symphony Orchestra for the coming season. He is, also, distinguished as a composer, and some of his compositions will be given on the Maverick this summer, in advance of their rendition next winter in New York. Mr. Leon Barzin, first viola of the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra, and conductor of the Maverick Festival Orchestra, it is hoped will be a member of the Quartet. The fourth member is still undetermined, and will be announced at the earliest possible date. And the pianist is well worthy of the group ... Mr. Charles Cooper, an American originally from California, immediately from Germany and France, is spoken of by the Flonzaley Quartet and the late Mr. de Coppet as one of the most comprehensive and brilliant artists of this country. Critics of The Boston Transcript, New York Herald, New York Tribune, New York Sun, and other metropolitan papers have been pleased to give long praise to his recitals, and we are fortunate to have his enthusiasm for our plans. In addition to the program of music, which will begin promptly at four every Sunday afternoon, there will be, on the walls of the concert hall, an exhibition of paintings by well known artists, and for this you will do well to come early. The initial exhibition will be from the work of Carl Lindin, now a resident of Woodstock and long an exhibitor in the picture galleries of Europe, especially in Stockholm, Munich, Paris and London; and in America, in all the principal cities. After the concert, tea may be ordered by those who wish refreshment before departing... served on the rustic tables in the woods by ladies who wish to aid in the payment of the hall.
Carl Lindin
“... there will be, on the walls of the concert hall, an exhibition of paintings by well known artists, and for this you will do well to come early. The initial exhibition will be from the work of Carl Lindin, now a resident of Woodstock and long an exhibitor in the picture galleries of Europe...”
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Let it be distinctly understood that these gatherings are to keep the nature of Sunday formality; that while they will be social as well as artistic, they will not, in any way, seem objectionable to those of strict Sunday observance, and will be in strong serious contrast to the Festival which will take place in the middle of the week and will be given over to the carnival spirit. These Concerts and the classes that grow out of them, for it is the intention of the artists to take pupils, will give a great impulse for good music in our schools and churches. Music is almost akin to religion, the highest, the most divine of all the arts. On fair days, the concerts may be given in the stone quarry stadium, of which the hall is an annex, below. The hall, itself, is a creation of the woods, a suggestion of rising trees and roofing branches. It is a beautiful place to hear music, but if some lovers of nature prefer to listen in the open, they can easily sit outside the spacious doors, or steal away into remote, secluded quiet. A good road is being built to the immediate entrance of the hall, so that on rainy days there will not be any discomfort. The price of reserved seats will be held at a dollar, and at fifty cents. These may be best ordered in advance, either singly, or for the season, but they can, also, be purchased at the entrance gate. The price of admission is twenty five cents; this especially for the near-by residents and students who are planning to be present at every concert. These admission ticket holders will hear as well as any, and it is urged that they will bring canvas artiststools or cushions or shawls, which can be spread on benches, steps or floor. Let it be remembered that the enterprise, the hall and its accommodations are new; that it is difficult to foresee the size of the audience: that there will necessarily be changes and adaptations; but that the management will be open to improvement and suggestion. As one hears the rehearsals of the musicians, and thinks back to the success of the Festival last year, he is overcome with the enthusiasm of the possibilities of this truly ideal musical and plastic art enterprise. He sees the artistic advantages that may accrue from co-ordination, till our organization may become a beacon light of beauty. Let us now see to it that the pioneers get the encouragement they deserve. The gate receipts are shared on a cooperative basis. Show your appreciation by purchasing the reserved seats in advance. Address inquiries, and make all checks to: Hervey White, Woodstock, N.Y.
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The Maverick Revival: Six Phases and Counting
1 Master Plan: Board and Architect imagine and plot the future.
2 Delicate reconstruction of the western porch around the vintage oak.
3 Structural reinforcing of the north wall barn sash collage, lacey with fragile windows. The first improvement was a restored porch to shelter concert-goers before performances.
4 Drainage improvements and north, south and west sill repair: The lay of the land aims water at the Hall. A new swale, shallow French drain and deep curtain drain redirect some water, while some is piped under the building. Craftsmen replaced, repaired or consolidated water-rotted sills along the northern, southern and western walls.
5 New composting toilets, ramped lavatory access and well.
6 New Green Room upcoming construction, also tiptoeing around a vintage oak. Photos by Steve Tilly, Architects
Composting toilet facility and ramp
Hillside water directed to preformed scour hole
Swale diverts water Birds eye view of the hall 12
The restoration of Harvey White’s window collage required skillful stitching of minimally visible structural connections.
Securing the hall for a future of music.
After sill repair before floor restoration
STEPHEN TILLY, Architect Sustainable Architecture and Landscape Design mindful of the genius of place. www.stillyarchitect.com 13
The 1976 Restoration of the Hall
by Cornelia Rosenblum
14
Steve Tilly
Our beloved concert hall is unique, built in 1916 with native lumber by local builder Dayton Shultis, resident carpenters and music students, Leon Barzin, the eminent conductor, among them. Hervey White determined that the hall would be devoted to “the highest class of music,” known as chamber music. The building and the land on which it stands were generously deeded to the Maverick Sunday Concerts in 1958 by Cornelius Van der Loo.
The design of the hall was conceived by Hervey White; built of boards and logs covered with bark, it was inspired by the communal houses of the Fiji Islands. To this were added doorways which suggested a Gothic religious structure, as did the windows, formed of barn sash set diagonally in great clusters. This “chapel” in the woods embodied Hervey’s belief that the concerts were akin to religious experiences. In 1976, 60 years after it was built, reinforcing cables, additional uprights, crossbeams and diagonals to support other beams had been added. The roof was sagging, main beams had weakened, and the foundation and footings needed firming up. In addition, panes of glass were missing Cornelia Hartman and the two exterior walls had been covered Rosenblum, age 4 with tar paper to keep out the rain. The hall was in need of a major reconstruction. Chairman of the board David Robison and vice-chairman John Ebbs raised the funds needed for this major project with heartening speed through individual contributions. A plaque on the wall of the concert hall acknowledges the major donors to the restoration. I was brought to the hall as a young child by my parents when, I recall, my major effort was to sit still... but I also must have listened because I developed a life-long passion for chamber music and a great love for the hall. Later, in my teens, when Maverick incorporated as a nonprofit, I was recruited by Hilda Cohen to become one of its first board members, little understanding that I would be serving on the board for many decades and became Chairman for a number of years. When the reconstruction of the hall became a pressing need I knew the perfect person to design and supervise this project was my father, Leonhard (“Loo”) Hartmann, a native of the Netherlands, an artist, sculptor and engineer. He had known the Maverick in its early days, first visiting on his motorcycle in the late 1920s and meeting my mother there when she, a dancer, was living in the Maverick, performing with the Mura Dehn dance group at the Woodstock Fireman’s Hall and participating in that year’s Maverick Festival. Later my parents bought a home in Woodstock, where we spent summers. In 1976, having retired from his working career as an engineer, my father was living in Woodstock and devoting his time to drawing and sculpture. A chemical and mechanical engineer, he had designed and built several projects using native lumber and had a real feeling for the kind of building the hall represented. Although it needed major structural reinforcement, great care was taken to preserve the original character of the hall. He designed a
David Robison, Art Ricks, Loo Hartmann, Bob (Eric) Carlson, & John Ebbs
series of wooden trusses, which gave the building added strength and permitted the removal of several posts that had been added over the years to shore up the roof. Local lumber was specified and cut well in advance in order to cure and blend with the existing sections of weathered timbers and siding that were possible to preserve. The work was carried out by a local contractor, Art Ricks. Adolph Heckeroth and his crew installed the new electrical wiring. My father supervised the project from start to finish, contributing all of his work. It was definitely not a run-of-the mill job, and many times the work crew found themselves scrambling on high beams and scaffolding in a rather daring manner. One of the carpenters, Marc Ebbs, a musician, made cabinetry and furnishings for the newly expanded green room as a contribution to the Maverick. The rebuilding of the hall was completed in time for the 1977 season. It was the kind of collaboration that embodied the original spirit of the Maverick.
Although it needed major structural reinforcement, great care was taken to preserve the original character of the hall.
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Betty Ballantine Remembers
Betty Ballantine in 1945
Betty Ballantine by Renee Samuels
In 1941 my father-in-law—the actor E.J. Ballantine (Teddy)—and his director-friend Cecil Clovelly began planning to put together a Student Theater for young actors and actresses. They would get on-the-job training, putting on a new show each week at the grand old Maverick Theater, which had been home to similar young companies since its creation in the early years of the century, launching such eventual luminaries as Edward G. Robinson and Helen Hayes. The Maverick Theater was part of a complex of concert hall, theater and rustic cabins built by Hervey White and his volunteer helpers, the cabins to serve as housing for resident artists, sculptors, writers and musicians—in short, a self-supporting Art Colony, the perfect setting for a rent-free Student Theater. The theater stood on a natural slope stretching down to the stage, backed by the dressing-rooms, the whole structure supported by bare, soaring tree-trunks set directly in the dirt “floor.” Like its fellow wooden buildings the theater had no formal facilities, no power and no running water. But it seated 600, on hand-made wooden benches, had superb acoustics, a really picturesque setting and an authentic air of Elizabethan splendor. The students, most in their early twenties with a couple of late-teenagers, were housed in the cottages and fed in a building equipped with plumbing and power just across the road. And the food was great, prepared by two ladies, Happyheart and Truelove (acolytes of Father Divine), who resided at the back of the “restaurant.” When the opening season of the Student Theater was finally launched, I was recruited as “gofer,” which meant I worked backstage doing make-up, helping actors practice their lines (the woods were full of murmuring voices rehearsing) and driving a huge, open Cadillac tourer, a highly suitable vehicle for the transport of borrowed furniture for stage sets, together with whatever outlandish props were needed—including, on one famous occasion, an enormous St. Bernard. I housed and fed the borrowed beast and remember driving through the village each evening for the week-long run, the magnificent canine seated in conscious dignity in the back seat. Of course he was not actually trained for the stage, but it was just a walk-on part…. However, he was a friendly fellow, and each evening he broke up his scene by lumbering down the steps to greet his admirers—while the actors waited, and waited, desperately improvising. It all caused a great deal of hilarity and was a notable achievement in audience participation. Luckily the play was a comedy. The Student Theater ran for a couple of seasons, garnering respectably sized audiences and actually launching the career of Margaret Phillips on Broadway, while half-a-dozen lesser lights landed happily in Hollywood—one of whom became the fifth husband of a famous star. Eventually, however, Clovelly was called to a directorship that took him away from Woodstock, and the Student Theater came to its end.
Although I first visited Woodstock in mid-1939 to meet my brand-new in-laws, my husband, Ian Ballantine, and I were basically citydwellers immersed in establishing a new publishing house. Mid-1940, however, saw the birth of our son and an opportunity to get better acquainted with Woodstock and the family. From that time forward I would spend summers in the country. 16
LESTER WALKER ARCHITECT SPECIALIZING IN RESIDENTIAL DESIGN Teddy Ballantine (with moustache) among fellow Festival revelers.
Meanwhile, the success of the “Theater in the Woods” had attracted a young, would-be director named José Quintero. José teamed up with a local artist, Eddie Mann, who had theatrical ambitions and a steady income from his cartooning—enough anyway to allow them to put together a small company, pay royalties and brave the primitive (but low-cost) venue of the Maverick, at least for an experimental season. That season, and those that followed, saw some really brilliant theater at the Maverick. José, Eddie and the dedicated group of actors they developed reinforced the proud history of the Maverick as a breeding ground for talent. A number of the young actors were “4-F,” hence not eligible for active duty in World War II. Moreover, with the serious gas shortage produced by the war, people were traveling as little as possible, and New York City discovered Woodstock as a nearby holiday resort. Eddie and José, echoing a famously raucous tradition of the old-time Maverick, organized several colorful festivals, together with costume events, picnics, competitions and parties by way of publicity to attract newcomers to the top-of-the-line entertainment being offered at the quaintly romantic “Theater in the Woods.” They were highly successful. At the end of their second season the company stuck together and headed for New York, where they managed to rent a theater downtown in the Village. Nobody needed to know that virtually the entire company took up residence in the theater, at least until they became financially viable—and famous—as the Circle in the Square. Wonderful how really good theater manages to triumph over a seemingly perennial shortage of money.
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managed to keep talking long enough to cue the other actors to Meanwhile, the following year, the summer amenities of the pick up the thread—somewhere—and carry the plot forward. It Maverick were once again available. This time, a promising made for gut-wrenching drama for his fellow performers and for professional traveling company arrived to test the woods for those of us in the know. Lee stayed with the company for the rest fame and fortune. Because of the long-time association of the of the season doing bit parts. In the Fall he attended acting school Ballantine family with the Maverick, the entire company was on the G.I. Bill, joined another company and toured, playing the invited to David Ballantine’s 21st birthday party… along with lead in A Streetcar Named Desire, was some 200 locals. Somewhere in the picked up by Hollywood and never wee hours the producer was lamenting looked back. the terrible crisis occasioned by the So, as in its beginnings, Woodstock’s abrupt departure of their leading man Maverick Theater proved to be a just before the company was due to breeding ground for the theatrical open with Lynn Rigg’s Roadside, a wellworld, a natural venue in which to known country comedy, a venerable practice the no-frills, on-the-job “oater.” Crisis is common in the theater, training which, over the years provided and Teddy was totally sympathetic. the larger world of entertainment with “You need a loud-mouth Texan for that scores of individual talents. part,” he remarked, and added, “Why Set used in 1921 Maverick Student Theater Alas, the beautiful, old, wooden not try Lee Marvin? Hey, Lee!” Lee structure with its roots set firmly in the lounged over, eyed the expectant group ground also provided a joyous home for termites, and in time they and said two words in that gravelly, basso profundo of his: “What’s took over. The great building became unsafe and had to be taken up?” The producer didn’t hesitate. “Would you care to read for down, succumbing to the natural world—the stage on which a part?” Lee’s response was equally prompt—and totally casual: it had played so significant a part… thus, as it were, staying in “Sure. Why not?” Like most of us, he was feeling no pain. character—in the best traditions of the many actors, musicians, We spent the next three days working the script. Lee never playwrights and thespians of all stripes which the splendid theater really learned the actual dialog, but he did grasp the continuity had helped to create. of the plot, and being an absolute natural on stage, he always
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John Cage at the Maverick
In explaining his thought processes, Cage later wrote: “I went into an anechoic chamber, not expecting in that silent room to hear two sounds: one high, my nervous system in operation, one low, my blood in circulation. The reason I did not expect to hear those two sounds was that they were set into vibration without any intention on my part…. I found out that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around. I devoted my music to it. My work became an exploration of non-intention.” Cage wanted his audience to listen to the sounds around them and even to the sounds inside their bodies, and to realize that what we hear is what we choose to hear. This pivotal performance at Maverick expanded the boundaries of music forever. One Sunday afternoon in August 1952, the Maverick Concert Hall was the scene of a revolutionary moment in musical history. Here in the woods, the young pianist David Tudor performed the premiere of John Cage’s most famous—and most infamous—work, 4’33’’ (Four Minutes and ThirtyThree Seconds). Although the work has often been called the “silent” piece, Cage wanted to show that a lack of notes was John Cage and David Tudor not the same thing as silence. The pianist read the score, turned pages, and closed the piano lid after each “movement,” but he never touched a single key. In explaining his thought processes, Cage later wrote: “I went into an anechoic chamber, not expecting in that silent room to hear two sounds: one high, my nervous system in operation, one low, my blood in circulation. The reason I did not expect to hear those two sounds was that they were set into vibration without any intention on my part…. I found out that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around. I devoted my music to it. My work became an exploration of non-intention.” Cage wanted his audience to listen to the sounds around them and even to the sounds inside their bodies, and to realize that what we hear is what we choose to hear. This pivotal performance at Maverick expanded the boundaries of music forever.
by Miriam Villchur Berg
john cage, composer david tudor, pianist PROGRAM aug. 29, 1952 ................................... john cage for. piano .................................christian wolff extensions #3 ......................morton feldman 3 pieces for piano ...................... earle brown premier sonata .........................pierre boulez 2 parts 5 intermissions ....................morton feldman for prepared piano .................christian wolff 4 pieces ........................................... john cage 4’ 33” 30” 2’ 23” 1’ 40’’ the banshee .............................. henry cowell PATRONS: Mrs. Emmet Edwards, chairman; Mr. ans Mrs. Sidney Berkowitz, Dr. and Mrs. Hans Cohn, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Cowell, Mr. and Mrs. Rollin Crampton, Mr. and Mrs. Roland d’Albis, Mr. and Mrs. Pierre Henrotte, Dr. and Mrs. William M. Hitzig, Mrs. Charles Rosen, Dr. and Mrs. Harold Rugg, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Semmler, Mr. and Mrs. John Striebel, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Thibaut, Jr., Capt. C. H. D. van der Loo, Miss Alice Wardwell.
MAVERICK CONCERT HALL
Friday, August 29
8:15 P.M.
BENEFIT ARTISTS WELFARE FUND
One Sunday afternoon in August 1952, the Maverick Concert Hall was the scene of a revolutionary moment in musical history. Here in the woods, the young pianist David Tudor performed the premiere of John Cage’s most famous—and most infamous—work, 4’33” (Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds). Although the work has often been called the “silent” piece, Cage wanted to show that a lack of notes was not the same thing as silence. The pianist read the score, turned pages, and closed the piano lid after each “movement,” but he never touched a single key.
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Yamaha Selected as Official Piano by Maverick Concerts
BUENA PARK, CA (January 21, 2005) — Maverick Concerts, established in 1916 in Woodstock, NY, is the oldest continuous summer chamber music concert series in America, and its concert hall is a National Historic Site. Handcrafted from rough-hewn pine felled in the surrounding Catskills forests by Hervey White and a group of “maverick” artists, the distinctive hall is rustically charming. Light streams in through 50 angled six-paneled windows, and the stage is graced by John Flannagan’s heroic 18-foot chestnut sculpture of The Maverick Horse. Woodland breezes, bird songs and summer rains, not cell phones and city traffic, complement the Maverick’s uniquely peaceful character. From June 26 through September 5, nearly 4,000 audience members, attending 22 weekend “Music in the Woods” concerts, experienced a decidedly modern addition to the hall’s bucolic ambience: a Yamaha Disklavier DC7 Pro. “In a hall like Maverick’s, which is semi-exposed, it’s a very good choice, very reliable,” says Susan Rizwani, chairperson, Board of Directors. “All the pianists performing here said it’s a definite improvement over our other piano.” Pianists featured in Maverick’s inaugural “Yamaha Piano Series” included Yamaha artist Pedja Muzijevic, Ursula Oppens (with the Rossetti String Quartet), Scott Dunn, Ruth Laredo (with the Shanghai String Quartet), Babette Hierholzer, and Lydia Artymiw (with the Miami String Quartet). Following her performance, Artymiw said, “Your Yamaha is a wonderful
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Maverick Concerts, the oldest continuous summer chamber music series in America, has selected Yamaha as its official piano — and the Disklavier DC7 Pro gives this historic concert series a decidedly 21st century twist.
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instrument, one of the best Yamaha pianos I have ever played!” Pianists Elinor Freer (with the Ying String Quartet), Nina Lugovoy and Alpin Hong also performed on the Disklavier. “We have been thrilled with the Yamaha DC7 Pro as our official piano,” says Alexander Platt, Maverick Concert’s music director. “We’ve enjoyed activating the Disklavier – we recorded Pedja’s glorious recital on it, and have had great fun learning how to use it – but what has been most wonderful about having the Yamaha is to hear Pedja Muzijevic by Renee Samuels the different colors that our various pianists have brought out of this beautiful instrument. From the incisive fireworks of Scott Dunn and Alpin Hong, to the tonal brilliance of Ursula Oppens and Lydia Artymiw, to the burnished eloquence of Pedja Muzijevic and Ruth Laredo, each guest artist magnificently made the Yamaha their own, both in chamber music and solo recitals.”
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Runaway Horse
FROM THE WOODSTOCK TIMES, 1986: The dictionary gives two definitions of “maverick”: (1) An unbranded or orphaned animal; (2) one who is unorthodox in his ideas, attitudes, etc. Hervey White, the first runaway horse to orphan himself from the Byrdcliffe Artists Colony, joined forces with others of his persuasion and today, 72 years later, Maverick Concerts is no longer a single runaway horse. It is a herd of musicians, music-lovers, painters, writers, actors, trustees, members of the board, volunteers from every walk of life, all joined in common purpose and guided by White’s light and vision. Hervey called his hall the “music chapel,” and believed that the concerts came close to being religious events. The hall and concerts have survived and prospered through economic depression and inflation, never sacrificing Hervey’s goal and vision: to share in the joy of old and new chamber music, to bring the best available chamber music every Sunday into Maverick Hall and the woods surrounding it, with the intention of elevating and enlightening the human spirit. “By involving chamber music players who had achieved a considerable international reputation but who hadn’t appeared in Woodstock, I knew that we would not be able to pay their regular fee, but I was curious to see if those who did come would acquire the same feeling about the Maverick concerts that so many musicians had in the past.” His risk-taking decision had paid off. Music Director Vincent Wagner follows a tradition hard to resist. “As you know, Hervey would see his musician and composer friends around town and ask them what they liked playing best and did they have time next Sunday or this Sunday,” says Wagner. “I do much the same, except today scheduling and selecting is much more complicated. Today it takes many, many phone calls to put together a season. The music is my first consideration. I want to produce a program Vincent Wagner by David F. Segal which reflects favorites from the past and encourages new compositions.” The tradition of music is the mandate of Wagner. Continuing in the White tradition, Maverick is one of the few chamber music series which includes local artists and composers. For twenty-two years Charles Libove and Nina Lugovoy, local violinist and pianist, have drawn some of the largest audiences.
by Abigail Robin
Seventy-two years of Maverick memories. Some events never change. Some are short-lived.
Cramer Family & Friend. Courtesy the Dorsky Museum
“[I]n July, in the Maverick Hall, on a side road between the villages of Woodstock and West Hurley, will begin a series of entertainments unique among the musical events or our country…” So wrote Hervey White, founder, owner, builder, director, and guiding light of Maverick Concerts, in 1916.” 22
For Wagner, “The most special aspect of Maverick is the audience. They are hardcore listeners. They are a group who knows what they like. They are discerning and willing to listen to an exotic new work or an unusual combination of instruments. The audience’s appreciation is what makes being involved with Maverick so very rewarding.” A varied and balanced summer program is what Wagner aims for. Quintets, brass and winds, string quartets, duos, and trios are 1987’s offerings. Special to this year’s season are premieres from two area composers: Alan Shulman and Herbert Haufrecht. Since 1971, Vincent Wagner has been Senior VP for Kazuko Hillyer International, Inc., a major artist management agency in New York. In 1979, Wagner bought a home in West Hurley. He calls it the “West Hurley poison ivy palace,” but anyone visiting would be hard pressed to find the poison ivy of which he speaks. Rather, his “palace” resembles a mini botanical garden, and it is easy to surmise that he spends much time turning his thumb green. Wagner’s concerns are with the future of Maverick in today’s world. “It is essential to continue to develop and build the Endowment Fund to the point that Maverick Concerts can survive in a new age where it may be increasingly difficult for volunteers to give the amount of time which so many of our trustees have given in the past and do now! This is a problem facing all the arts.” Continued on page 24
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with not-for-profit organizations, I have never known such a spirit John Ebbs, associated with Maverick since 1975 and of cooperation and an egoless community such as Maverick and chairperson of the board since 1979, sees Maverick as the “most its friends.” Aileen Cramer, “a local girl,” remembers with delight cooperative arts organization in Woodstock’s history. Maybe it’s being part of the Loft Players in 1949 under the direction of Jose the image of the runaway horse which keeps us unified,” says Quintero. The Maverick Theater, which stood Ebbs. “We are an organization of people who adjacent to the hall, resounded with laughter contribute their talents without hesitation. We and tears. The theater is gone, but Cramer’s are all willing to make a commitment to work involvement and dedication to the Maverick for the good of all and do so with pleasure.” spirit remain. Cramer also remembers David Ebbs has watched Maverick Concerts Robison’s inspiration, “his push, excitement, grow and change. “We have become a bit more and intelligent guidance” in initiating a new formal over the years. Maverick Concerts has direction for Maverick. “We all joined hands become a professional presenting organization and hearts around David and Naomi Robison, introducing internationally renowned chamber and the Friends have flourished.” Cramer music artists. Our involvement with the New continues to chair the Friends of Maverick, York State Council on the Arts has assisted us which will be featuring the Tokyo String financially and, equally important, has given us Quartet on Sept. 13. It is a special concert for guidelines for continuing to run head to head donors only. with newer chamber music series who have To close with a quote from White: “Let more money and more structured organizational it be remembered that the enterprise, the hall, charts. and its accommodations are new, that it is In 1979, Friends of Maverick was created difficult to foresee the size of the audience, by David Robison (father of Paula and Joshua) in that there will necessarily be changes and order to raise money to refurbish the ailing hall. adaptation, but that the management will Aileen Cramer and Lillian Surasky shouldered be open to improvement and suggestion. the task of promoting and finding support for Let us now see to it that the pioneers get the Friends. Surasky comments that it was an easy Portrait of Aileen Cramer by encouragement they deserve.” job. “In all my experience with working for and local portrait artist Lois Wooley
Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Westfeldt, and Dominic Fumusa in The Power of Duff by Stephen Belber, directed by Peter DuBois. Photo © Buck Lewis
Aileen Cramer, “a local girl,” remembers with delight being part of the Loft Players in 1949
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June 21-July 28 on the Vassar campus / powerhouse.vassar.edu / (845) 437-5907 Media Sponsors of the 2013 Powerhouse season
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Renee Samuels
Mary Fairchild
Free Young People’s Concerts Saturday 11AM. Admission is free for all young people under 16. These wonderful concerts, long a Maverick tradition, are designed for enjoyment by school-age children. Accompanying adults pay only $5.00
FLETCHER GALLERY Appraisals, estates, portrait painting and large-scale commissions
Saturday, June 29, 11 am ELIZABETH MITCHELL & FRIENDS This Grammy-nominated Smithsonian Folkways artist has been enchanting family audiences for almost twenty years.
Open to the public Thurs-Sun 12-6 pm 40 Mill Hill Road Woodstock, NY 12498 Tel: 845-679-4411
f l e t c h e r g a l l e r y . c o m
Saturday, July 6, 11 am ERIBETH PIANO TRIO Cellist Erica Pickhardt. Featuring Music of Benjamin Britten From a family of Woodstock musicians, Erica shares her lifelong love of music. She is also a cellist with the Maverick Chamber Players.
dion ogust photography
Saturday, July 20, 11 am ILYA YAKUSHEV, piano This award-winning young Russian pianist brings charm along with the virtuoso touch to a delightful concert for children of all ages.
portraits headshots images that work dionphoto.com 845•679•4135
Saturday, August 3, 11 am MARC BLACK, vocals and guitar This singer-songwriter is a Woodstock legend whose music blurs the line between adult and children’s entertainment.
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Maverick Concerts is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
Maverick Concerts is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Yamaha is the official piano of Maverick Concerts. The Yamaha C7 grand piano appears through the generosity of Yamaha Artist Services.
Mariella Bison, “Born in a Boulder,” 2012, Mixed Media on Linen, 96 X 60”
Music in the Woods Since 1916
Call 845-679-8217 for concert information or visit Maverick Concerts online at maverickconcerts.org. Email: maverickmuse@aol.com Maverick Concerts Mailing Address: P.O. Box 9 Street Address: 120 Maverick Road Woodstock, N.Y. 12498