Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.
concerts

Annual Tritle organ concert at Smithfield

Annual Tritle organ concert at Smithfield

Kent Tritle at the organ of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC.

Joshua Smitth

An anticipated fall favorite event at The Smithfield Church is the now-annual virtuoso organ performance by Kent Tritle, organist for the New York Philharmonic, this year to be joined by Arthur Fiacco, Jr. on Cello. The concert will be held on Saturday, Sept. 14, at 3:30 p.m. Proceeds will benefit the Oratorio Society of New York where Tritle serves as Music Director.

For the past ten years, Tritle has performed an annual concert on the Smithfield Church’s historic tracker organ, a favorite of his. The program will include a variety of selections, from classical to modern, along with Tritle’s incomparable commentary on each. Selections will include organ solos and duets with cello, interpreting the works of Bach, Vivaldi and Mendelssohn, with two works by modern composers.

Tritle serves as the music director for several award-winning choral ensembles, including Musica Sacra and the Oratorio Society of New York, while also serving as Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

For the Smithfield concert, Tritle will be joined by Arthur Fiacco, Jr. with whom he has performed many times, usually with Tritle serving as conductor and Fiacco leading the orchestra’s cello section. It is rare to hear the two in a duet setting.

In addition to sitting as principal cellist of the organizations conducted by Tritle, Fiacco is also a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He has performed at renowned music festivals, including Caramoor, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Marlboro, Music Mountain and Lincoln Center Festivals. He has appeared with Broadway’s Patti LuPone as a soloist, harpsichordist Igor Kipnis, Meredith Monk and the Mark Morris Dance Group.

Fiacco’s cello was crafted in 1730 by Venetian master Carlo Tononi.

The suggested donation at the door is $25.00. A reception with the musicians will follow the concert. The Smithfield Church, located at 656 Smithfield Valley Road in Amenia, is handicapped accessible.

Leila Hawken
concerts

Latest News

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

On Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cornwall Historical Society, author and genealogist John Mills will breathe new life into the stories of some of Connecticut’s more underappreciated patriots. The reason these heroes were forgotten? They were Black.

At a time when white colonists were fighting for their own liberty and political independence, many Black men who fought alongside them remained enslaved. Some risked their lives only to return to bondage. Though enslaved people were promised freedom from both sides of the Revolutionary War in exchange for their service, Great Britain, too, was still deeply dependent on slavery. For Black people in America, the war presented both extraordinary risks and uncertain paths to the freedom that white colonists were demanding for themselves.

Keep ReadingShow less
education

A sanctuary for second chances

A sanctuary for second chances

Stephanie Saetta runs Charlie Chicken Bones, a sanctuary in Salisbury.

Madi Long
You only get one or two of these soul connection dogs, so I do this in his honor.
— Stephanie Saetta

Stephanie Saetta has spent much of her life caring for others. A physician at White Plains Hospital, she has another calling at home in Salisbury — one that has four legs and a wagging tail. She runs Charlie Chicken Bone Sanctuary, a nonprofit dog rescue that brings dogs from overcrowded pounds and the streets of Texas to foster homes in northwestern Connecticut, where they can begin again.

The sanctuary is named for Charlie, the dog who taught her how special a bond between a person and rescue animal can be.

Keep ReadingShow less
our community

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Hunter Runnette, founder and board chair of field, has spent years fostering arts and cultural programming in the Berkshires.

Provided

What do joy, gardening, artificial intelligence, the American experiment and the creative process have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out, at least when some of the world’s most compelling thinkers get together to talk about them.

From Friday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 25, Lenox, Massachusetts, will host the inaugural field festival, a three-day gathering of writers, artists, scholars and cultural figures at Shakespeare & Company. Billed as a festival of ideas, entertainment, learning and discovery, field brings together an impressive roster of voices to explore everything from the deeply personal to the profoundly political.

Keep ReadingShow less
community
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

The Pink House AM is serving up community

The Pink House AM is serving up community

Mare Rubin and Maggie Levine of the Pink House AM.

Madi Long

It all started with a yoga class. Mare Rubin was working on her second act after leaving the Upper West Side, where she’d raised a family and worked in corporate marketing. Newly empty nesters, she and her husband decided to move to the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where they had spent 15 years as weekenders, to see what life in the woods had in store for them.

Rubin started teaching yoga classes at the Union in West Cornwall, a space designated by the town of Cornwall as a community hub with couches, Wi-Fi, occasional events and a growing yoga class schedule. She was adjusting well but missed one important thing about city life: a casual coffee shop.

Keep ReadingShow less
business

One more weekend to get inside the art at ArtEast

One more weekend to get inside the art at ArtEast

The participating artists in this year’s ArtEast open studios.

Provided

ArtEast’s annual October Open Studio Tour is already underway, but there’s still one more weekend to step inside the creative worlds of artists working throughout eastern Dutchess County. On Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25, artists will once again open their studio doors, inviting visitors to see where the work happens, meet the people who make it and perhaps discover something worth taking home.

Now in its 21st year, the ArtEast October Open Studio Tour offers a self-guided journey with participating studios in Holmes, LaGrangeville, Hopewell Junction, Pawling, Patterson, Poughquag and Wingdale. Visitors can explore painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media and other artistic practices, and get some leaf-peeping in at the same time.

Keep ReadingShow less
open-studio

An appetite for life: Tarajia Morrell’s “Desire Feeds the Feast”

An appetite for life: Tarajia Morrell’s “Desire Feeds the Feast”
Author Tarajia Morrell in her kitchen.
Jessica Antola

In her new memoir, “Desire Feeds the Feast,” writer Tarajia Morrell traces a life shaped by an appetite for beauty, pleasure and belonging. On Saturday, Oct. 24, Morrell will discuss the book with fellow author Dani Shapiro, whose works include the memoir “Inheritance” and the novel “Signal Fires,” at a prerelease event at Troutbeck in Amenia. Published by Zibby Books, a women-led startup, “Desire Feeds the Feast” will be released Nov. 3.

Described by author Chris Pavone as “a deeply gratifying emotional feast of a memoir: poetic, dramatic, romantic, atmospheric, sensual, evocative, poignant, heartbreaking, heartwarming,” this tale brings readers on a restless journey. Morrell writes of the “electric excess” of the New York City club scene in the late 1990s and the Hollywood tables where she waited on celebrities while pursuing her acting career. Her wanderlust took her to the beaches in Uruguay, where she discovered the “brine and brightness” of ceviche, the splendor of Barcelona’s food markets and, back home, the simple pleasure of a ripe plum eaten by her “graceful mother.”

Keep ReadingShow less
book talk
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.