maverick Concerts Festival

2 0 1 2

Music in the Woods

1

David Gubits

Marilyn Janow

Dr. Ed Leavitt

Lawrence Posner

Susan Rizwani

David F. Segal

Sondra Siegel

The Thompson Family Foundation

Jane Velez

Willetta Warberg

Paul F. Washington

Laurie Ylvisaker

We Are Proud To Support TheMaverick Concerts

Dio

n O

gust

1

Table of Contents 2 Board of Directors 2012 Summer Schedule

3 Timeline 1916: The First Season

4 - 5 Leon Barzin (1901-1999) Recalls The Early Years

6 - 11 Music Goes Back To Nature (from the 1916 New York Times article)

12 - 13 A Message from Music Director Alexander Platt

14 - 15 Hervey White’s Maverick Festivals Changed My Life. By Jean Lasher Gaede

16 - 17 In Honor Of My Father, Edgar Villchur (1917-2011). By Miriam Berg

18 - 19 Hosting The Players. By Jane E. Brody

20 - 21 96-Year-Old Maverick Hall Gets An Overhaul By Paul Smart

ContributorsWriters: Allen Updegraff for The New York Times,

Alexander Platt, Jean Lasher Gaede, Jane Brody

and Paul Smart for the Woodstock Times

Editor: David F. Segal

Graphic Design & Production: Katie Jellinghaus

Photos & IllustrationsCover: Large photo, Simon Russell. From top, Dion Ogust, Renee Samuels, Simon Russel.

Back Cover: Painting by Mari Lyons

Inside cover: Dion Ogust, The Maverick Horse by sculptor John Flannagan

Please support our advertisers, as they make this program guide possible.

Flet

cher

Mar

tinFl

etch

er M

artin

Zai

denl

ig

Dio

n O

gust

2

Board of Directors 2012 Summer ScheduleSaturday, June 30, 8 Pm ACTORS & WRITERS. Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays

Sunday, July 1, 4 PmTHE IMANI WINDS. “Duke Ellington, Paris & New Orleans.”

Saturday, July 7, 11 amYoung People’s Concert SIMON POWIS, classical guitar

Saturday, July 7, 6:30 PmSTEVE GORN & FRIENDS: Indian classical music

Sunday, July 8, 3 Pm & 4 Pm THE SHANGHAI QUARTET3 PM Prelude: Pedja Muzijevic, piano Franck, Mozart, Ravel, Schumann

Saturday, July, 14, 11 amYoung People’s Concert Andrew Appel, harpsichord

Saturday, July 14, 6:30 PmFOUR NATIONS ENSEMBLE Bastille Day concert. Music from the 17th through the 19th centuries on period instruments

Sunday, July 15, 4 PmLATITUDE 41 PIANO TRIO Schubert, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky

Saturday, July 21, 6:30 PmWOODSTOCK BEATPETER SCHICKELE. Benefit for the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. Tickets for this concert are only available from the Woodstock Guild at 845-679-2079.

Sunday, July 22, 4 PmLEIPzIG STRING QUARTET Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Franck

Saturday, July 28, 6:30 Pm Jazz at the Maverick “Cole Porter in Paris.” PERRY BEEKMAN & Friends, vocals & band

Sunday, July 29, 4 Pm zUILL BAILEY, Cello, ROBERT KOENIG, piano. Bach, Debussy, Franck & selections to be announced from the stage

Saturday, auguSt 4, 11 am Young People’s Concert ELIzABETH MITCHELL & FAMILY

Sunday, auguSt 5, 3 Pm & 4 Pm AMERNET STRING QUARTET 3 PM pre-concert talk with composer Russell Platt. Debussy, Platt.

Saturday, auguSt 11, 11 am Young People’s ConcertJON KLIBONOFF, piano

Sunday, auguSt 12, 3 Pm & 4 PmTRIO SOLISTI. 3 PM Prelude: Jon Klibonoff, piano. Debussy, Chausson, Cage, Ravel

Saturday, auguSt 18, 6:30 Pm Jazz at the Maverick THE ÉBèNE QUARTET. An evening of hot jazz with this fabulous foursome

Sunday, auguSt 19, 4 PmTHE ÉBèNE QUARTET Mozart, Fauré, Tchaikovsky

Saturday, auguSt 25, 6:30 Pm Jazz at the Maverick BILL CHARLAP & RENEE ROSNES, pianos

Sunday, auguSt 26, 4 Pm FREDERIC CHIU & ANDREW RUSSO, pianos. Debussy, Glass, Gershwin, Ravel

Saturday, SePtember 1, 6 Pm CHAMBER ORCHESTRA & Sequitur: Fauré, Meltzer (World Premiere), Debussy, Duparc, Poulenc, Ravel

Sunday, SePtember 2, 4 Pm JUPITER STRING QUARTET. 3 PM PRELUDE: ILYA YAKUSHEV, piano. Ravel, Webern, Beethoven, Bizet, Franck

Saturday, SePtember 8, 6:30 Pm Jazz at the Maverick “Autumn in Paris.” FRED HERSCH, piano

Sunday, SePtember 9, 4 Pm BENEFIT CONCERT: TIM FAIN, violin. Bach, Glass, Ysaÿe. Donors of $50 get one invitation. Gifts of $100 or more are thanked with two

Sunday, SePtember 16, 2 Pm TOKYO STRING QUARTETFINAL MAVERICK CONCERTAfter 39 annual visits the quartet is disbanding at the end of this season. Haydn, Webern, Schubert

CHaIrman David F. Segal

VICe-CHaIr David Gubits

treaSurer Lawrence Posner

SeCretary Dr. Ed Leavitt

bOard memberS Marilyn Janow

Sondra Siegel

Jane Velez

Willetta Warberg

Laurie Ylvisaker

Susan Rizwani Former Chair

CHaIr

emerIta Cornelia Rosenblum

Scul

ptor

of t

he M

aver

ick

hors

e, Jo

hn F

lann

agan

and

a v

ery

youn

g Li

nda

Swee

ny

3

It was election year in which Democratic President Woodrow Wilson defeated Charles E. Hughes. First successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored. Supreme Court of the United States upholds the national income tax. Paris is bombed by German zeppelins. Parliament buildings in Ottawa are burned down. Dadaism founded. Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control. The Battle of Verdun begins.

Yuan Shikai, the last Emperor of China, abdicates the throne, The Irish Republic is proclaimed, United States Marines invade the Dominican Republic, Saturday Evening Post publishes its first Norman Rockwell cover, Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

One million soldiers die during the Battle of the Somme, Russian forces defeat troops of the Ottoman Empire in Armenia, German agents cause the Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey. President D.W. Griffith releases Intolerance. Margaret Sanger opens the first U.S. birth control clinic. First 40-hour work week officially begins in the Endicott-Johnson factories of Western New York. The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed, Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.

The White Star Liner HMHS Britannic, a floating hospital and sister ship of the RMS Titanic, sinks in the Mediterranean sea. Grigori Rasputin is murdered. The British Sopwith Camel aircraft makes its maiden flight. Oxycodone is synthesized in Germany. Summer Olympic Games in Berlin canceled.

2

Timeline 1916: The First SeasonYear 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year, and the Maverick Concert Hall opened for its first-ever concert.

It was a year of important births: Composers Henri Dutilleux, Alberto Ginastera. Milton Babbitt; musicians Yehudi Menuhin, Robert Shaw, Emil Gilels; authors Horton Foote, Irving Wallace, Harold Robbins; performers

Dinah Shore, Harry James, Gregory Peck. Glenn Ford, Olivia de Havilland, Van Johnson, Martha Raye, Kirk Douglas, Betty Grable. Henry James died in 1916, as did King Otto of Bavaria and the composer Max Reger and painters Thomas Eakins, Georges Lacombe, and Odilon Redon.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents its first concert; Gustav Holst composes “The Planets,” Opus 32; Carl Nielsen premieres the Symphony No. 4. Other composers create works: Béla Bartók: Suite for Piano; Ernest

Bloch: “Israel Symphony,” String Quartet No. 1; Claude Debussy: Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp; Frederick Delius: Cello Sonata; George Enescu: Piano Trio; Alexander Glazunov: “Karelian Legend”; Paul Hindemith: Cello Concerto in E-flat, Op. 3; Charles Ives: Fourth Symphony; Igor Stravinsky: Burleske for four Pantomimes and Chamber Orchestra; Heitor Villa-Lobos: Second Cello Sonata.

Pancho Villa attacks New Mexico; President Woodrow Wilson sends troops to Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa.

Chicago Cubs play their first game at Wrigley Field, Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America. Cub Scouts founded. Woodrow Wilson signs legislation creating the National Park Service.

Such words of one of the very greatest of French painters remind me of the moment in my summer as a conducting fellow at Tanglewood when, in the famed living-room at Seranak, the Koussevitsky mansion-turned-conducting-classroom of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the great American pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher made the case for the ultimate superiority of the Austro-German repertoire in classical music: no music, he said, better explained man’s place in the universe. It was a statement with which I immediately disagreed. And though, as you all know, my devotion to the Viennese tradition in chamber music at the Maverick has ranged from somewhere between the dogged and the obsessive, it is with my first love, French music, that I return this year as your curator at our legendary “music chapel” in the woods. If, 20 years later, I might ultimately agree with Dr. Fleisher’s claim, no music more than that of France best conveys the profound and immediate joys of being alive… and, as that master painter of the Barbizon School confessed above (was not the Woodstock of 100 years ago an American version of the Barbizon quest?) there are still some spiritual journeys to be had along the way.

Our pretext for such a festival season is an obvious one, as 2012 marks the sesquicentennial of the birth of Claude Debussy and the 75th anniversary of the death of Maurice Ravel. Along with these two giants of French musical Impressionism, we also tip our hat to one of the great living Americans, Philip Glass, who turns 75 this year. Glass was one of the last great students of Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), studying with her in Paris on a Fulbright from 1964 to 1966—the last in a line of great American composers, that goes all the way back to Aaron Copland, who would go to Paris to study with the revered lady seemingly minutes after the Guns of August had stopped their blare. From Copland to Glass, everyone who was someone in American music would go to Paris to study with and pay homage to this amazing woman, a kind of musical thank-you to the nation that gave us Lafayette. But there the history lesson ends, as our aim at the Maverick is not to provide you with a scholarly smorgasbord of everything that happened musically in 19th-century France, but rather to bring you a long summer of beautiful music, both ancient and modern, that happens to go well together. Out of deference to the younger festival across the river at Bard, the music of Saint-Saëns is almost completely avoided here. If Glass shares a link with Debussy and Ravel, it is an outward gentleness betraying an inner revolutionary, a shared desire to free Western music from its traditional sense of time and space—not in a destructive way (such as with the Second Viennese School) but rather in a tone ultimately of gentle persuasion. It is in that spirit that so many of this summer’s masterpieces will be presented, from many of the greatest chamber-music works of Debussy and Ravel – from their string quartets to some of their monumental works for two pianos—to some masterpieces of far more recent vintage by Glass and other young Americans. In a final gesture to this sense of continuity, the Tokyo String Quartet, annual visitors to the Maverick since not long after their inception over four decades ago, will make their swansong performance for us in this summer’s final concert.

The great quartets and trios who will parade through the Maverick this summer on our beloved Sunday afternoons together are too many to mention, but in our ever-enterprising Saturday concerts– 75 minutes, pre-dinner, no intermission–we will explore some other Gallic byways: from Perry Beekman and his pals celebrating Cole Porter in Paris to Andrew Appel and his Four Nations Ensemble singing the glories of the French Baroque to Fred Hersch’s

French-inspired jazz to Steve Gorn and his colleagues’ classical music of India. (It should be remembered that during Glass’s two years in Paris Ravi Shankar’s music had a profound effect on him.) But if there are two “shadow composers”

in this year’s Gallic summer, they are that immortal pair of French composers of the generation just before Debussy and Ravel: Franck and Fauré. Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), in many ways a long-lived father-figure to the French Impressionists,

4

“I also heard the voices of the trees… this world of flora lived as deaf-mutes whose signs I divined and whose passions I uncovered; I wanted to talk with them & to be able to tell myself… that I had put my finger on the secret of their majesty.” – Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867)

A Message from ourMusic DirectorAlexander Platt

Ray

mon

d M

eier

Com

posi

t: Ph

oto;

Jeni

fer

Gir

ard.

Art

; The

odor

Rou

ssea

u

left us with a uniquely melancholy musical style, a masterly combination of refined classicism and wistful regret. Some of the greatest of them, the songs comprising his cycle La Bonne Chanson, will be presented at our annual Chamber Orchestra concert near the end of the summer, during which we’ll present the work in its little-heard version for voice, piano and strings. This inspires me to mention that the Ébène Quartet from Paris, surely the most electric—and eclectic—of the great young string quartets before the public today, will offer Fauré’s late and lamentably neglected single String Quartet as part of their weekend with us. This is the first entire weekend at the Maverick in recent memory devoted to one ensemble; in their

Saturday installment, they’ll present their prodigious talents in the jazz arena, too. If there is a foil to the eternal stylishness of Fauré, it would be in César Franck (1822-1890), that eternally

unfashionable of French composers. Indeed he was born in Belgium, but he moved to Paris as a young man, participated in the barricades of 1871, and lived there his whole life. (If we must always call him Belgian, then we must always call Ravel a Basque!) The Belgian connection has other resonances: the very first Maverick concert festival, in the World War I year of 1915, was organized in part to raise funds for Belgian refugees, and Tim Fain, a Maverick perennial, will play the greatest of the solo Sonatas of Eugène Ysaÿe, the violinist-protégé of Franck who led the first performance of his master’s single String Quartet, a work which will be re-created for us by a new Maverick favorite, the Leipzig Quartet. If Debussy and Ravel form the musical linchpins of French Impressionism, then it would be in Franck that we would find the sonic equivalent of the earlier musings of the Barbizon School; would not those tortured landscapes of Théodore Rousseau find it’s musical brethren in the chamber music of Franck, with it’s darker Rhenish overtones and, as the critic said, their “serene anxiety?” The then-fashionable opera composer, Gustave Charpentier, in his remembrance of the Belgian master, really captured the elusive essence of Franck, the shy and saintly Paris Conservatory organ professor whose music exposed almost alarming depths of passion: “And César Franck vanished as discreetly as he had come in, a personage who to our eyes was surrounded by a great deal of prestige and a little mystery. My comrades and I, in those years, somewhat foolishly neglected the chance he offered us to penetrate some of the secrets of his art. Perhaps because the offer was made in ritual fashion, a bit too loftily, a little too distantly, by one who himself, deep down, did not really dare approach us as pupils of Massenet. Could it have been that… it was above all the point of human contact, of trusting communication, which proved to be defective, indeed non-existent, between the meditative great man and our pack of bird-brains?”

4

woodstockschoolofart.org 845-679-2388

July 7 - September 1, 2012 Monday -Saturday, 9 am - 3 pmReception: Saturday, July 7, 3 pm - 5 pm

ROBERT ANGELOCH EXHIBITION Work by the late WSA co-founder at

Appraisals, estates, portrait painting and large-scale commissions

F L E T C H E R G A L L E R YOpen 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

Ren

ee S

amue

ls

5

7

From the very beginning, music at the Maverick was a unique effort of professionals and amateurs. I mean “amateurs” in the finest sense of the word: lovers of the art. Even those participants whose profession was music became amateurs during the summer months, playing and performing music solely for their own pleasure and for the pleasure of others. In the early days of music at the Maverick, the regular season for orchestral musicians was only 32 weeks. That left over four months of the year. It was before the days of air travel and the international music festivals, and there was very little regular summer employment. But in those days, first chair symphonists and established soloists made enough money during the year to take the summer off. Gently encouraged by Hervey White, they began coming to Woodstock. After a summer in Woodstock, they encouraged other musicians to come and spend the lovely summer months. And so the resident colony grew. Since they were artists, they had to go on making music. There was a great deal of informal playing at our house, at Pierre Henrotte’s house and elsewhere (Henrotte was a violinist and concertmaster of Metropolitan Opera, who organized the very first program and was in charge of programs through 1926). We, both the older and younger musicians, played wherever and whenever the spirit moved us. For us it was a very exciting kind of music-making, because the senior musicians were all principals of symphony orchestras or experienced soloists. During the regular season they had very little chance to play chamber music, so they went at it during the summer with particular relish. From the outset the musicians’ experience was enriched by the daily contact and dialogue with painters and sculptors which only a community such as Woodstock could offer, an interplay of the arts which today we are still trying to achieve. Painters would ask us to look at a new work, and we would ask the painters to come and listen to a sonata we were trying out. Until the hall was built we had no place to play for a larger audience. Performers like audiences; they need them. The interplay between the performer and the audience is one of the most exciting aspects of the total experience. The musicians welcomed Hervey’s announcement that what he called his “music chapel” would be built. The wood for the building—oak and pine and even chestnut—was cut and milled locally

and dragged to the site by teams, and the young people went to work. Hervey was very warm toward young people and there were always young students about who helped him around the Maverick settlement. I was 16 or 17 and was part of the building crew. None of us knew very much about carpentry. There was one young man, the son of a local farmer, who had become an apprentice carpenter; he came the closest to being a professional. The rest of the work was strictly amateur. But Hervey had a way of getting things done.

We were building to meet an immediate need, not for the architectural or engineering judgment of later

generations, so the planks went up on the sides and you could put your hand through the gaps between the rough-hewn boards. The windows went in “by-guess and by-God.” When the green lumber on the roof proved too heavy and it looked as though the life of the building might be brief and dramatic, Hervey drew on his years of study

of art in Europe, and rustic adaptations of the flying buttresses of Gothic cathedrals were put up to

support the roof the first year. The concerts began. From the very first performance there was a delightful mixture of formality and informality. Nothing in Woodstock can ever be completely formal. Then, as now, people came dressed as they saw fit, by foot, by bicycle, by horse

and wagon and by the few automobiles which existed in the village at the time. But once the music

started, it was formal. It was always performed on the highest of professional levels, as seriously and with the same dedication it would have received in New York or any other large city.

Leon Barzin (1901-1999) Recalls the Early YearsBarzin was a former Music Director of the Maverick and Musical Director of the National Orchestral Association & the original Music Director of the New York City Ballet where he worked with Lincoln Kirstein & George Balanchine

6

Will

y Po

gany

Leon Barzin bust by Paul Fiene

Will

iam

Kro

ll &

Leo

n Ba

rzin

by

Hel

en S

hotw

ell

7

The resident community grew. Eminent musicians such as Georges Barrèr, who at first had no intention of settling in Woodstock, came and played—and stayed. Hervey White would build a new house and charge $125 rent for the summer—if the musician could pay. Some musicians bought property. In those days if you wanted land you pointed out where you wanted your property to begin and end. “I want from that tree stump over to the stone wall and back to the little brook.” You didn’t even know or figure out how many acres were involved. I still have the property in Woodstock, and nobody is quite sure where the boundary lines are. It was a very congenial group, no politics and a minimum of jealousy. In fact, it was sometimes difficult to get a particular musician to play, they were all so anxious to defer to each other. “Why don’t you play this week?” Those early years had a great influence on me. In the early 1900s everything musical had to have the European hallmark. Woodstock was a beginning for many young American musicians. I saw how little opportunity was being offered in the general musical field for our own considerable American talents. It stimulated me to start the National Orchestral Association in 1929 as a training ground for young American symphonists. Over the years many talented graduates of the conservatories went to Woodstock in the summer for the unique experience of playing chamber music with outstanding artists before an interested and concerned audience. There were few other such opportunities elsewhere in the country.

The situation for musicians during the summer has changed considerably since then, but the idea of the Maverick remains the same. That is why musicians today have such respect for the Maverick concerts. Musicians love the tradition; they are basically idealists, and the Maverick is an idea! It is free of the commercial aspects which surround so many contemporary “festivals.” Experiences comparable to the Maverick are still hard to find. It is lovely to think that the idea initiated sixty years ago has remained the same all this time, and that a concert series designed to fill an immediate need is still filling that need, in a vastly changed world.

Toby@hvc.rr.com Cell:845-853-5351 Home:845-679-5438 Fax:845-679-2006

5 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY 12498www.winmorrisonrealty.com

www.peaceofmindwoodstock.com

RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL LICENSED REALESTATE SALESPERSON

TOBY HEILBRUNN

Up in a wild bit of Catskill woodland, Hervey White, once novelist and poet, and now also musical director, architect, and high financier, is presiding over the testing out of a musical enterprise that he has been some ten years preparing. There have been three tests of it now, on the last three Sundays: the first was more than satisfactory, and each successive test registered, approximately, a 20 percent improvement on the preceding one. From all the nearby Catskill summering places, and from some at a considerable distance, people are coming to the music chapel that Mr. White has built on his farm in the Woodstock Valley to hear the eminent musicians Mr. White has gathered play the best chamber music, which he selects himself. On the day when Mr. White was interviewed for the purposes of the present story, the owner-builder-director was very busy. It was a Saturday afternoon, and he was washing out his best purple sateen Russian blouse in preparation for his Sunday appearance at the chapel. “What I’m proudest of in connection with this whole matter,” he announced, philosophically rubbing yellow soap on a bad spot, “is my development as a high financier. Nearly everybody said I couldn’t put this over without money. High finance is a great discovery. We are living in a remarkable age.” Mr. White has been called a number of things, but never a high financier. Some learned members of the Woodstock artist’s colony speak of him as “The American Tolstoy.” They are deceived by the fact that he wears a Russian blouse, flappy cotton trousers, much hair and beard, and lives a contemplative bachelor existence in a cabin of his own building. As a matter of fact, he is much more nearly akin to our own Henry David Thoreau. Take three parts of Thoreau, including Thoreau’s poetical gift and ability to live on nothing a year, add a passion for the world’s best chamber music, a gift in the direction of arts and crafts architecture, an inability to be worried, and a quiet sense of humor, and you have an approximation of Hervey

White of Woodstock. Even such a sobriquet as “The Oscar Hammerstein of the Catskills” fits him far better than “The American Tolstoy.” “I was just thinking that I’d devoted most of the last ten years of my life to high finance,” Mr. White went on, and paused to regard the undiminished spot with pained surprise; the spot looked like printer’s ink, and the corner of a foot-power printing press, apparent through the upper half of the wide Dutch doors of his cabin, suggested that it might be printer’s ink. The hand basin in which Mr. White was doing his washing did not seem to measure up to printer’s ink. He applied more yellow soap, and continued: “My reasons for wearing this purple Russian blouse, for instance, are high financial—not at all a desire to make myself conspicuous. A purple Russian blouse is comfortable, does not break the line of the body awkwardly at the hips, and is easily renovated by washing and hanging on a bush in the sun. For the same high financial reasons I do my own housework and live in the woods. High finance, I was thinking, consists in getting the good things of life without money. I humbly opine that I have met with some success along that line. “When I invested in this farm, ten years ago,” said Mr. White, dashing a few drops of honest sweat from his brow and resuming his offensive against the spot in a manner that suggested

much tenacity of soul, “I did it with the idea of gathering some good musicians during the Summer months and giving chamber music in a rustic music chapel among tall trees at the foot of a hill. Chamber music, by its nature, is degraded except when it is

9

© The New York Times

Music Goes Back To NatureSUNDAY, JULY 30, 1916

8

Allan Updegraff

given by selected musicians in a rustic music chapel among tall trees at the foot of a hill. The farm cost $2,000, and I happened to have nearly $200 in cash at the time, so turned that over to the owner. I suppose a good high financier would have kept his $200, but I was just beginning, you remember. “Thus 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. “Therefore I explained to a good neighbor who owned a sawmill that I wanted to have some musicians up at my place during the Summer so that I could give concerts, and that I

needed lumber for the bungalows where the musicians were to live. If the neighbor would supply the lumber and help with the building, I promised to repay him out of the rent the musicians would pay for their bungalows. The neighbor agreed to co-operate. I then explained to a Woodstock storekeeper that I’d have plenty of money as soon as I got my bungalows built, a dozen musicians in

them, and the rent collected from the musicians—who would, incidentally, help to swell the storekeeper’s Summer trade. The storekeeper at once granted me unlimited credit. Yes, high finance is a great thing! “I will not say there were no difficulties connected with the matter; I had expected to erect my music chapel within five years, and you see that it is just completed. For one thing, I demanded such high qualifications in my musicians that I had a great deal of trouble in keeping them quite and contented. The better a musician is, the more readily he becomes enraged. I don’t know how many times my most prized acquisitions have either departed in a rage, or driven away other artists whom I prized almost as highly. First violins are especially prone to demand anything from a new and rare variety of teapot to the immediate discharge of all the rest of the orchestra. Of course, from the first Summer, my musicians gave concerts in the neighboring cities and villages, and my chief nightmare has been not so much my lack of funds as my fear that I should never be able to secure a proper number of rare and eminent musicians able to stand one another’s company long enough to develop that esprit de corps demanded in the rendition of chamber music. At times my departing artists were so much upset that they even forgot to pay their rent—a minor matter, but troublesome. “However, by patient endeavor I think I have banished this difficulty for the present,” said Mr. White. He held up the purple blouse, on which he had been steadily operating while he talked;

9

SOUTH PEAK

VETERINARY HOSPITAL, PC

Proud to Support the Maverick Concerts

1712 Saugerties RoadRte. 212, Woodstock (845)679-6091

Portrait of Hervey White (1920s) by Bolton Coit Brown. Lithograph. Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, gift of Eric Kaz.

1110

oodstockeldenkrais

WF

Christine BeckerGuild Certified Practitioner

276 Tinker St, Woodstock NY845-206-1081

christine@woodstockfeldenkrais.com

Experience easy, pain-free movement! 25% off your first session with this ad.

the place where the spot had been showed the same satiny purple translucence as the rest of the interesting garment. Perseverance had conquered. “My present flock,” he continued, after he had deposited the blouse on a blueberry bush and himself, pipe in mouth, at the foot of an illustrious pine tree, “is both unusually tractable and unusually distinguished. There have been only two threats of immediate departure in six weeks of its existence, and in both cases the trouble was soon smoothed over. I admire and trust every one of them. “The pianist, Charles Cooper, the only unhyphenated American of the quintet, is a

young Californian who recently made his debut in Boston and New York as a concert soloist, after three years’ study in Paris and Berlin. Harold Bauer put the finish on his instruction, the Flonzaley Quartet recommended him to me, and the late Mr. de Coppet classified him as the most comprehensive and brilliant piano artist of the younger generation in America. “The first violin, also a young fellow, comes from the famous Marteau Quartet of Berlin. He studied under Henri Marteau in

the Royal Conservatory, and was appointed official substitute teacher for that worthy successor of the great Joachim. The second violin is an Italian boy, Gualtiero Gastelli; he is only 26 years old, but he has played first violin in the Metropolitan Opera House orchestra for the last six years, and he has both feeling and fire. “The viola is Rudolph Bauerkeller, a member of the Damrosch Orchestra, released to me when Damrosch completed his nation-wide tour on May 15 last. Mr. Bauerkeller is half-English, half-German, with friends and relatives in London, Berlin, Manchester, and Hamburg, in all of which places he has given recitals. Under the circumstances, he has decided to become an American. Last Winter he founded the Ensemble Society of Studio 608, Carnegie Hall, for the purpose of advancing the cause of chamber music in New York; this work is creditable to him, of course, even though New York is no place for advancing the cause of chamber music. “My ‘cello—has human genius ever devised a more perfect instrument than the ‘cello?—my ‘cello, Engelbert Roentgen, is worthy of playing the ‘cello, even in a rustic music chapel among tall trees at the foot of a hill. He is a Dutchman, with German music masters in his ancestry, and an artist, and an idealist. Before the war he had reached the rank of solo ‘cellist for the Imperial Court Opera of Vienna; a week after he had come to America from Amsterdam, two months ago, he was engaged as solo ‘cellist for the New York Symphony Orchestra for the coming season; and he is still in his thirties! He is also a composer. New York will hear some of his compositions this

Pegg

y V

into

n Br

own

17 Tinker St., Woodstock, NY 12498 • 845-679-6161 www.Jaritas.com • Jaritasflorist@gmail.com

Jarita’s FloristFlowers & Plants for All Occasions

Winter, but the Woodstock woods will hear them first—and best. “So these be my eminent and tractable musicians. Perhaps they are tractable because they are all young, and eminent because they are already marked for greatness. Now shall we walk over to the chapel where they make divine music, as is fitting, on Sunday afternoons?” We walked out through the pine woods that surround Mr. White’s big cabin to the road that leads southwestward to meet the Ashokan Reservoir road at Glenford, main artery of Summer motor traffic into the higher Catskills. Eastward the road ran to the West Hurley railroad station, and thence to Kingston and New York, branching within a half-mile of the hall to pass through Woodstock, Bearsville, and the summering places thereabout. Mr. White added to his other accomplishments, it seemed, that of being a good strategist. His position was excellently taken. A good by-road, the lack of which was noticed and supplied by a neighboring farmer in return for an indefinite promise to pay, led across a little meadow to a clump of tall trees, shadowed by a rock-sprinkled hillside. The building

appeared suddenly; in spite of its bulk it was so hidden by great trees that there was no visible sign of its presence until the road opened at its big front porch. Except for the curious arrow-shaped inlay of some fifty six-paned windows in the front gable and the prolongation of the roof along one side to form a huge porch, it resembled nothing so much as a sizeable new barn. It was sided horizontally with rough pine boards, whose unpainted, knotty surfaces the weather was already turning a dark tan. Mr. White led the way across the spacious front platform, beneath the bracing-beams of unbarked logs that will support a porch roof as soon as succeeding high finance permits at one of the four big pointed-topped doorways. Inside, the afternoon twilight, let in by the mass of windows in front and by other masses high on either side of the players’

platform, was softened by ivory-tinted walls. Big uprights, of unbarked logs, paneled the room, and smaller logs defined the panels at top and bottom. From either end 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.

11

WMHT Educational Telecommunicationswmht.org | 4 Global View | Troy NY 12180

Classical WMHT-FM 89.1 88.7

WMHT-TV Channel 17.1 CreateTV 17.2 WORLD 17.3

Enriching our communities with programs

and services that advance education,

culture and civic engagement, empower

individuals, celebrate our diversity and

reveal what we have in common.

10

Car

l Lin

den

13

“Whitewash, thin whitewash, over the dark yellow pine board, made that color,” explained the architect-owner, indicating the peculiar mottled old-ivory tinting of the panels. “Henry MacFee, the young Modernist painter of Woodstock, you know—who has been one of our local distinctions ever since he received real money for some Modernist pictures at the recent New York Forum Exhibition—thought of the whitewash, in combination with the rough yellow pine, the green light outside, and the dark brown finish of the floor. The panels were especially designed to exhibit our chief local product—pictures. Among the members of the Woodstock artists’ colony who have exhibited and will exhibit are Carl Eric Linden, Henry L. MacFee, Eugene Speicher, Andrew Dasburg, Konrad Cramer, John E. Bates, Paul Rohland, Allen Cockren, Frank Chase, George Macrum, Frank Birtie, William Grimm, Charles Cook, and Edmond Rolf. Later on we expect to have on display the work of Woodstock poets, novelists, sculptors, and metal workers. You know we have a valuable assortment of artists of all descriptions around here, especially in the Summer;

and the arts ought to fraternize more than they have been in the habit of doing.“Sometimes when I get my pipe going good,” said Hervey White, sitting down on one of the long rough pine benches with amazingly comfortable backs that served for orchestra seats, and puffing at the said pipe with slow intensity, “I imagine this building as the first of a number of buildings that shall serve as a sort of Summer home for all the arts – especially the arts of music, dancing, drama, painting, sculpture, and metal working. Such arts might be better practiced and enjoyed here

among these woods, at least during the Summer months, than in the cities; and it is in the Summer that most people have most time to give to the arts. See what has been done in only ten years by one man, without any money, and with no special aptitudes to speak of. “Last Sunday nearly 400 people, including several farm-wives and two millionaires, heard Beethoven, Arensky, Debussy, and Chopin played as the composers— and God, too, I think— intended they should be played. Besides that chief accomplishment, an old stone quarry on the hillside just above us has been converted into an open-air theatre seating 2,000

12

The

Let

z Q

uart

et b

y K

onra

d C

ram

er

persons. Also there is a printing plant back in the cabin, an editorial office whence issues a monthly magazine of Woodstock literature, and all around there are twenty willing hands to help where there was one ten—yes, two—years ago. Do you blame me if I begin to puff out my chest and dream great dreams?” Mr. White hastily brushed tobacco ashes off the bosom of his second-best purple blouse, where his enthusiasm had deposited them. “I’m not doing this on altruistic grounds—not at all,” he objected, as if he had been accused of something. “One of the pleasantest parts of last Sunday’s proceedings was that I received nearly $20 as my fourth of the ticket plunder. Twenty dollars!—twice what I’d expected—a fortune to a high financier! Before Fall I shall be able to finish the outside of the hall with slabs—give ‘The Masque of Woodstock’ in my quarry theatre—and meet the interest on the whole highly financed enterprise.

“I have an ambition,” confessed Mr. White, slowly turning toward the door. “I wish to amass a fortune of such size that I shall be able to become a reformed high financier, pay all my debts, and die an honest man.”

13

5 Years Awards "Best of Hudson Valley"& Best Day Spa 2011

3 Years "#1 Attraction Woodstock" TripAdvisor

WOODSTOCK NY 845.679.7800 WWW.RIVERROCK.BIZ

(845)679-2115 www.hhoust.com

Just AskRENTAL

Proudly supporting the Maverick Concerts

Flor

ence

Cra

mer

15

I was at one of Hervey White’s notorious Maverick festivals, and it changed my life. My sister Eileen was ten and I was six when we arrived at the Maverick Festival grounds, anxious to see what all the talk was about. Before us was a landscape of unknown pleasures. Bonfires lit the scene as groups gathered around flickering fires to chat, sing and cook. We knew they were preparing exotic foods of every possible type. As my eyes swept this field of celebration the smoke wafted as an invitation to hurry. I wanted to lift the lid on every one of those pots and taste every food. I looked around me and saw gypsies and pirates and Indians and straight-back ladies astride their high horses just waiting for the next event to happen. Little houses were built up into the trees. Wrestlers were somersaulting while strutting their muscled bodies. Some girls rode their farm horses to the “party”. Groups of men clung together, offering sips from exotic flasks to friends. (I thought it was just to give them extra courage to face the music, but I wasn’t sure.) Naida, Hervey’s goat, white with a blue painted horn, kept track of the quarry, wandering, overseeing the festival, checking it out from the high bluestone ledges of the quarry. The music drifted out from the festival grounds. In the background, the fires burned brightly, casting weird and wonderful shadows. As the night wore on, they burned down to calm, glowing red embers, making it seem even more beautiful. I wanted to stop and look at all the costumes and listen to the laughter and listen to each and every musician playing. These were sounds I had never heard! I tried my best to take it all in. Even the simplest banter and all the conversations were the subject of my intense attention. I leaned into the unfamiliar accents and desperately tried to find my way through it all.

Everything was so exciting that I suddenly realized life was different from what I had known!

Hervey White’s Maverick Festivals Changed My LifeBy Jean Lasher Gaede

When people ask, as they always do in Woodstock, “What do you do?” I reply, “I applaud!”

14

Jean Lasher, 6, and her sister Eileen, 10, dressed up in festival garb. “Grandma Davey made our costumes. My Aunt Salo chaperoned us, but we had to leave promptly at dusk before the grown-ups showed... more’s the pity.”

Above photo of Jean & Eileen Lasher at a Maverick festival & concert is from the Maverick Notebooks at Woodstock Artists Association & Museum.

At dusk, we children were briskly herded to the parking area. On the way out we passed a row of men dressed up in black suits and ties going into the festival. They were marching all in a row, one behind the other; they descended into a pit that had been dug down in the field below the quarry wall. The woods were darkening, but we could see they were carrying musical instruments. There was a breath-holding moment before they started to play; like them, I held my breath in anticipation.

We recognized that they were carrying violins (only because I had a neighbor who played one), but I had never seen such “ballooned up” violins before, and I saw that the men had to remain standing to play! With their bows ready and silent, they were waiting to go to work. Now these beautiful men were bringing their instruments close to their bodies, and they began creating wonderful clucking and plucking sounds in the night. When it was fully dark, we saw the entire scene was lit by a truly magical light. Above this spectacular sight, the large and nonplussed audience was laughing nervously as they cautiously picked their way along the precarious path that went up the quarry wall. They climbed up and up in the dark, testing their footing on the rolling stones and loose pebbles until finally taking their places on the temporarily arranged rows. I imagined they secretly hoped for a seat next to that admired person they had surreptitiously watched on the street during the sunlight in their “real town.” (While I wasn’t certain, I think I saw the iceman wink at my still-beautiful mother.) The music drifted out from the festival grounds. In the background, the fires burned brightly, casting weird and wonderful shadows. As the night wore on, they burned down to calm, glowing red embers, making it seem even more beautiful. Even as Alice had slipped into her Wonderland, this Woodstock child had glimpsed a great new world, and as it turned out, these wonders became the pivot on which my life still turns! . 15

LandauOPEN 7 DAYS679-8937

GRILL& BARSERVING LUNCH & DINNER

14

17

I grew up in a household where classical music was always present. On the little phonograph my father built for me, I used to listen to Peter and the Wolf, Sleeping Beauty,

and Petroushka. We moved to Woodstock from New York City in 1952, and my parents, Eddie and Romy, became part of the circle of artists and musicians who lived and worked in the area. I remember being at the home of composer Henry Cowell for an afternoon gathering, and being enchanted by his compositions, some of which he played directly on the strings of the piano. Both of my parents loved to sing. They joined the Woodstock Chorus, and there met choral director and composer Alexander Semmler, who was also the Music Director of the Maverick Concerts. Semmler wrote a Christmas operetta, Full of Wonder, which the chorus presented in 1954. I had a small part (at the age of six), and sang along with my alto mother on the choral sections. Semmler and Cowell were friends; Cowell inscribed “For Alex Semmler” on one movement of his 1959

orchestral work entitled Characters, and Semmler wrote a string quartet in memory of Henry Cowell. The Philharmonia Trio—which consisted of long-time Maverick musicians Charles Libove (violin), Alan Shulman (cello), and Nina Lugovoy (piano)—premiered piano trios by the two composers at a concert during the Maverick’s fiftieth anniversary season (1965), and later recorded the works. I was probably nine or ten when I first attended a Maverick concert in the late fifties. Experiencing live musical performance was spell-binding, as was being part of an appreciative and like-minded audience. I remember seeing people of all ages dressed in their finest Woodstock attire—women in peasant blouses and long skirts, men in Russian tunics. The spirit of the original Maverick festivals of the 1920s lived on. Even in my youth I was struck by the magic of live chamber music, performed by world-class ensembles, in a perfect acoustical environment. The history of the hall—illustrated by the photographs and drawings of musicians that lined the walls—added to the Maverick mystique. After college at Barnard, I went on to study musicology, including two years at the State University at New Paltz (studying with Mary Jane Corry) and graduate work at NYU. When Dr. Corry recommended me to Maverick’s then Music Director Vincent Wagner to take over from her as program annotator, I jumped at the chance. Writing the program notes combines my favorite things—music, writing, teaching, and learning. My father learned to be a radio engineer in the Army Air Corps in World War II, serving as the communications officer of his squadron in the Philippines and New Guinea. When he returned to the States, he opened a radio repair shop and took night classes in engineering. He specialized in designing home sound systems. In 1954, he invented and patented a new loudspeaker that reproduced music, especially bass frequencies, better than any speakers had done before. He formed Acoustic Research (AR) and ran it for 13 years before returning to his preferred careers of research and scientific writing. The historic Maverick Concert hall underwent a major structural renovation in 1974, and Eddie acted as an acoustical consultant. He said the open spaces between the planks of the side wall must not be filled in, since that would result in a “boomy” bass sound. Over the years, my father was a major financial supporter of the Maverick and a long-time member of the Board of Trustees, but what he was most proud of was his

help with maintaining the extraordinary acoustics of the concert hall. When he would bring guests to concerts, he would point to the wall and say, “You see those spaces where light comes through? Those were my contribution to the Maverick.” My father was a great lover of string quartets. His favorite composers were Beethoven, Schubert, Bartók, and Shostakovich. He was passionate about live chamber music, and attended concerts—especially string quartet concerts—at the Maverick during 50 summer seasons. Illness forced my father to stop attending Maverick concerts several years ago. In 2009,

In Honor Of My Father, EdgarVillchur (1917-2011) By Miriam Berg

Henry Cowel & Alexander Semmler at entrance of the hall

“I was probably nine or ten when I first attended a Maverick concert in the late fifties. Experiencing live musical performance was spell-binding, as was

being part of an appreciative and like-minded audience.”

17

violinist Tim Fain visited him after his solo concert at the Maverick and played the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin—another of my father’s favorite works. Eddie told Tim his playing reminded him of Yehudi Menuhin’s interpretation, which he had listened to in the 1930s on a 78 RPM record that was a prized possession. I have been writing the program notes here at the Maverick since 2002. I always sit in the front in order to watch the musicians, but my father preferred the acoustics in the rear of the hall. On those days when he and I both attended the concert, he would come over to me during the intermission. He inevitably had some minor correction to my notes, perhaps an instance where I should have used, or not used, a hyphen

or a semi-colon. He did not see this as criticism, but rather as his fatherly duty to offer guidance. One time he brought good friends to the concert and proudly told them his daughter had written the program notes. Then he added, “She gets her writing skill from me.” He had the right to be proud of his contribution. He

did indeed teach me to write clearly, and I am honored to carry on his legacy, especially here at the historic concert hall that meant so much to him, and that holds so many cherished memories for me.

CUCINA R E S T A U R A N T - B A R

109 MILL HILL ROADWoodstock, NY 12498

Available for Private Parties

T 845.679.9800www.cucinawoodstock.com

Bur

t Wei

nste

in

True confession: Richard and I weren’t planning to attend the Saturday night Maverick concert by the New Century saxophone quartet. It just didn’t seem like our kind of “chamber” music. I didn’t even know at the time that saxophones came in four ranges. But we’d agreed to house (and feed) the musicians and two of their partners, who turned out to be absolutely charming, delightful and helpful guests; and it quickly occurred to us that it would be “politically incorrect,” if not downright insulting, to skip their performance. So, not expecting too much, we went, and boy, were we surprised! It turned out to be one of the best concerts I’d ever attended anywhere. We were blown away by their talent, their performing skills and their choice of music, including a beautiful piece one of them had written. Among the side benefits of putting up the performers: they gave us two of their CDs and bought two of my cookbooks!

To say the least, we were hooked on housing performers, and every summer we (and now me, since Richard’s death in March, 2010) have continued to open the house to world-class Maverick artists, including Simone Dinnerstein and her family (who happen to be my neighbors in Brooklyn), cellist zuill Bailey and soprano Maria Jette, among others whose names now escape me. All now have become friends. This season I expect to be delighted once again by zuill, this time with his fiancée (or wife—not sure of their planned hitching date). A few Maverick seasons ago, when a prestigious group had to cancel their concert due to a serious family illness, we got a last-minute plea to house a trio from Europe that would take a quick detour from their American concert schedule to play in their place: the Trio con Brio Copenhagen—a Danish pianist,

Jens Elvekjaer, and two Korean sisters, Soo-Jin Hong and Soo-Kyung Hong, on violin and cello, respectively. In a happy coincidence, Richard’s heritage was Scandinavian, and we have a Korean daughter-in-law (and two half-Korean rap-loving grandsons), so how perfect was that! Despite the Trio’s frantic schedule and traffic delays getting to Woodstock (we ended up dining at 9:30 p.m.), the members of the trio were as delightful as the saxophone quartet had been. And they, played too, a concert to die for, and flattered me by asking for the recipes for two of the dishes I served them. E-mail addresses were exchanged, and Jens, who has since followed my health columns in The New York Times online, sent me a touching condolence note when Richard died. He also keeps me in the loop when the Trio plays anywhere in the United States, and treated me and a friend to their performance in 2010 at Rockefeller University in New York.

1918

Hosting the PlayersBy Jane E. Brody

Lisa

Mar

ie M

azzu

cco

“...we’d agreed to house (and feed) the musicians and two of their partners, who turned out to be absolutely charming, delightful and helpful guests.”

Ren

ee S

amue

ls

19

zuill Bailey, whom I had met years earlier in Brooklyn when he played a salon concert at a friend’s house with his then–fellow Julliard student Simone Dinnerstein, is—in addition to being drop-dead gorgeous—a surprise a minute. As the father of two young boys, he had a fair number of youthful amusements up his sleeve with which to entertain my grandsons, who happened to be visiting one of the three times he stayed with us. And, quirky artist that he is, each stay required a menu check because zuill is forever adjusting his diet to, he believes, improve his health and his performance, which to my ears needs no improvement.

Then there’s Maria Jette, already a three-time guest who would have become a four-timer last summer if Hurricane Irene had not cancelled Alexander Platt’s chamber orchestra concert in which she was to star. We were first asked to house Maria when she starred in Alexander’s benefit chamber orchestra concert because she comes from Minnesota. Richard, a Svenska by heritage, was born and bred in Garrison Keillor country (Pastor Engqvist could easily have been fashioned from one of Richard’s uncles), and I met Richard in Minnesota when I, a Brooklyn transplant, was a cub reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune in the early ‘60s. Ms. Jette is a frequent guest on Garrison’s show, and Richard, who tried never to miss the Prairie Home Companion, had heard her sing several times, so her prodigious talent was no surprise to him. What was a surprise was her ebullient personality and irrepressible good cheer (even when she came down with a severe sinus infection on the morning of the day she was to perform), which proved a stark contrast to my often-morose spouse and clearly lifted his spirits. To those of you who might consider putting up Maverick performers, I should assure you that you are not obliged to cook breakfast, lunch and/or dinner for them, though I must say that traveling artists do appreciate the chance to eat a home-cooked meal in someone’s home. You know your limits and should exercise them. You can always order in from one of our faithful sponsors, or even take the artists out to eat. But whatever you do, I can almost guarantee you’ll have a good time and, through a more personal experience with the artist(s), you’ll enjoy the concert even more than you might have otherwise.

18

Signifi cant increase in TDE (Total Digestible Energy)

Your pets will absorb more nutrition from eating quality food

You will see an increase in your pets overall health & energy

Your pet will be starting their day with a “balanced system”

Not playing catch up trying to re-hydrate an already depleted system

Target & fi nd any food allergies by using one fl avor at a time

Locally Made, Chicken, Beef, Turkey or Salmon

for supplemental nutritionin 1lb, 2 lb, 6lb & nuggets

for more information www.woodstockmeats.com

Signifi cant increase in TDE (Total Digestible Energy)

Your pets will absorb more nutrition from eating quality food

WHY RAW?

No Antibiotics No Hormones

LESTER WALKER ARCHITECTSPECIALIZING IN RESIDENTIAL DESIGN

845-679-4217LESTERWALKERARCHITECT.COM

“Ms. Jette is a frequent guest on Garrison’s show, and Richard, who tried never to miss the Prairie Home Companion, had heard her sing several times...”

Ren

ee S

amue

ls

20

They say the best preservation jobs are invisible. You can’t tell they happened afterwards; everything just seems to have been heightened, magically. There’s a new glow to all that’s remembered, a freshness of vision. A renewed sense of permanence.

Years from now, many will be able to use the just-completed work at the Maverick Concert Hall in West Hurley as a textbook example of all that can go right when historic preservation and maintenance work is done spot-on right. You see the place now, and one can hardly tell anything’s been done on it over the last year, or that the work entailed expenses of nearly $1 million in

federal, private, and state arts funding grants and donations. “I think it’s been a wonderful effort,” said noted architectural historian Neil Larson, who served as owners’ rep on the project. “When we entered into this, trying to ensure that the north window wall would be preserved, our main interest was to put it all back together as if it had never been taken apart. As it turned out, everyone used such a very soft touch on the work at hand that now we’ll have to put together a slide show to show that there was actually work done there.” What’s now almost done came into view four years ago. In 2008, now-retiring U.S. Congressman Maurice Hinchey helped secure a $148,000 Save America’s Treasures matching grant from the federal government towards stabilization work at the historic Maverick Concert Hall, hand-built by festival and colony founder Hervey White and his friends and followers in 1916. Later, the New York State Council for the Arts gave Maverick Concerts one of two fully-funded $50,000 grants for preservation work. At first, according to former Maverick board chair Susan Rizwani, the main problem in view was that iconic window wall, which was starting to shake, lose caulking, and drop window panes. It was realized there were foundation problems in the rough-built hall, constructed directly on the ground. The idea was to keep things lasting another 100 years, to match the length of time since White and crew first built their hall.

A Renewed Sense of Permanence:

96-Year-Old Maverick Hall Gets an OverhaulBy Paul Smart

“...the end result looks just slightly more beautiful than what was there before.”

– Susan Rizwani

Dio

n O

gust

Stev

e Ti

lly

Steve Tilly

Once work started on drainage issues around the hall, however, it was discovered that the sills upon which it all stood were badly damaged by rot. “It was more than we had anticipated,” Rizwani said. “All those years of the hall sitting directly on earth had an effect.” What resulted was a complete reconstruction job, following the elemental drainage and foundation work beneath the structure. Eventually, all the windows and siding planks were taken off the concert hall, numbered and labeled, and eventually put back, using original nail holes. “It was incredible the care everyone took,” Rizwani continued, noting the contributions of architect Stephen Tilley of Croton, building contractors Ren and Elaine Tate of Tate Construction in Red Hook, and drainage and sill specialist Mark Peritz of The Joy of Building, right here in Woodstock, as well as all their local crews. “The end result looks just slightly more beautiful than what was there before.” Timing, of course, was of the essence…the new steel reinforcement beam beneath the structure, along with all the original glass from the north window wall, had to be in place by now…because the concerts are set to start by late June. Which leaves only so much time for the natural world to re-surround and embrace its friend of 96 years now, this grand, quirky structure. “Everyone’s been very pleased by this project,” said Larson, noting the contributions of Building Committee chairperson Sandy Siegel in the process (Siegel was unavailable for comment at the time of this story). “We hope this will be appreciated,” added Rizwani Which we suspect it will be…especially given the double punch of welcome surprises included in this summer’s as-always grand schedule, available now online at maverickconcerts.org.

LAURIE YLVISAKERAssociate Broker

VILLAGE GREEN REALTY

11-13 Mill Hill RoadWoodstock, N.Y. 12498OFFICE: 845-679-2255 EXT. 113LaurieYlvisaker.com

NUMBER 1 SELLING WOODSTOCK AGENT 2011*Thanks to my clients & friends

*According to MLS Statistics

New construction, renovations, repairs, additions, historical restorations,

and much more...J.O.B. Construction is proud to have been selected

as the contractor to install the new exterior drainage system and perform major structural

repairs to the Maverick Concert Hall.

Mark Peritz(845) 679-7032

thejoyofbuilding.comjobconco@gmail.com

The Joy of Building®

21

Bis dolupta tesequia doluptati voleni untiam, suntin cusciam que il mi, sin nectur? Quidus conseque enda volor sitam re pratem si odipsandus delibea nim ra consequunt venectota voluptibusam reium aut apictemporem fugia sed quis excernatia dolorro et eatemporro officaborume plaborr oviduntem conseni mporum alis autatus volorro rererep ernatem debitat ibusci inusa voluptatem res ad mosam erum adisitiis volorer ovidem non pore, ut moluptume rem dus, quatur? Ehendita dipitatibus et iusae dolupta dis as escit quid modia accate peribus simet rem de mos am, sed quide nonescidunt faciatat mollore pellab idel magniet ea et omnihilicte Iberupta dus ut volore, sam, tem fugiatasi sam. As eatur sequam, qui corporum, nos dolori cor molorest vendam nist facia conet moloria sum harions equatem aute dem et, ut recte nihicia turibusam, quame isimi, simperit, ommodiorum facia voluptatur sum, odi rerit modis sequid est deseque nit vendaepudia andernatio molecul paribus eatiam quibus adi ipsam essitis dolorep udaerum rest quaeperum velloremque sinullu ptatio con eos expelest, nimus. Undis dipsape nihilique adit fugia sim reris velesent est, et, consequodit, etur? Quid uta vendam rescid maxime vid quis int, occabor reptass ectotasped et idunt, similiquunt, tene coraturit voluptatur rerferum dest eat pero quatiataque officium volupitas volo verferio. Ditatur aut ratatur sequi reriandae lant reium estiur, cum quis ni sum quiae debit, ut escium volores dolessi minveratias sundige nimusda epudaero te quia verionet eos ulpa volo debiti te pres con reste volorum dolore eum re conse es excestios nosam aliquiate nobit, commolu ptisto isqui od eat. Tatem dolupti orpore disite cullore mporissus explit est venitae natur reste debisciet aborionseque sit evenda nihitium endam autempossus ex exerovid ullabor eserferi tempore vere sam sero cusdam adionse nonseque vereper ferori bla quo cum volupta eum earum quaeceates nosae prate poreperia di as ium elent, sim quos excepti orest, et lit faccum reheniet hari ut enimporum quatent, ommolorion cumquat quunto voles aut vel eossi nationse parum cum, simetum voluptatum que volorep edipsan imagnis aut et as modi conem voluptur alitium im facculliquia volorendi dolor aut rerum, volorae consequis venis sit ut fugit, unt quamusae cum fugia volecus aut aut volores tiisciliat. Ihil min cum aut et explam que aut liquiant ium aute volest volore voloribus mi, quiae. Ximusant ommolendit laborro eiusanit alicili busdae lam, alit laccabo rianima gnimi, ommodi cumquo vollest inciis ab id mosam quiatem nim ut fugiamus et re es ate ipsum dolupta spellum aut optaturero to officiet abo. Itat quae dolorum sunt, officae pa conectus. Odis acerumquae di id maio occae. Itatus verit maximil is restibus eossim am, od que natur? Ebit, que et ad et quamSimoloribus incte nia corrum facerum enihillam a nusae santur, optisciis imos vid ullabo. Haribus quis aut a consequi qui corenihitae veni nobis nusapiet quo bearchil id ut vent, as at faccus aut veles re volectectas sunt accume porempe rcitatem am et assitatquiam rero volest, consequia sitaquo dicipic atibus, sita abo. Labo. Itam voloremolut libus nus iundione nihillore ad mos ressimus et elestio. Obit quatem cor a poreptaepuda nullaci dolupic ipitatia ipidus doluptaqui nos ea cusci dolorem doluptatum se pos est mincitat ut ommolut modit inis quae idebitias as minihit, quodign imincto eos eum qui re quis mod es ab in consed molum quidenis es rempedis voluptas pellaccullam etum andi berescid estes dolorerciis illatibea voluptae volorecaecte latatis ut rem ipident iuntiusda sollaccate es alit mi, quisseque pratiam lant fuga. Nequiae plit la conserae ad et, id modiatio volendiatem ea derempo riorepudae et id mos senis que ratur rernat eum quos illorum doluptat quo esequis qui sum qui tem ea is audicat.

Mary Fairchildproblems solved • 845-658-4564 • fairchildmary@gmail.com

Dio

n O

gust

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.

Call 845-679-8217 for concert information or visit Maverick Concerts online at maverickconcerts.org. e-mail: maverickmuse@aol.com Maverick Concerts P.O. Box 9 Woodstock, N.Y. 12498

maverick Concerts Festival

2 0 1 2

Music in the Woods