![A little winter night music](https://lakevillejournal.com/media-library/opera-singer-john-viscardi-courtesy-of-close-encounters-with-music.jpg?id=50680804&width=980&quality=90)
Opera singer John Viscardi Courtesy of Close Encounters With Music
Close Encounters With Music invites its audience to embrace the magic and mysticism of December’s darkness with a thematic concert titled “Nocturne — Night and Dreams,” held at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Mass., on Sunday, Dec. 3, at 4 p.m.
With selections that include Frédéric Chopin’s “Nocturnes” piano solos and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s original composition of his ensemble chamber serenade “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” (“A little night music”), Close Encounters’ artistic director and internationally acclaimed cellist Yehuda Hanani has organized an evening based around the connective poetry of these pieces.
“In one aspect, night represents the sun going down; there’s quiet, silence, and a sense of healing,” Hanani said. “People draw close together, and you get a release from the brightness of the sun’s heat. You get into the domain of the subconscious. So, this one aspect is soothing, peaceful, and full of fantasy and dreams. And then there is the other side, the ‘dark side of night,’ if you like. And that’s when you get a sense of the sinister, the menacing, the terrifying, the unpredictable things that go bump in the night. There’s a scary part of the night, and ancient mythology and artists all recognize this duality. The same is true for the moon, which represents rebirth, regeneration, and the lunar cycle, but also presides over lunacy and death.”
No night-themed concert would be complete without Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata No. 14,” later popularized in Germany as “Mondscheinsonate,” or “Moonlight Sonata” in English. Famous for its melancholy opening adagio sostenuto, a ghostly, wordless chant, the sonata is both morbid and romantic.
“‘Moonlight Sonata’ is, of course, a magical piece of music, and it starts with a hypnotic slow movement,” said Hanani. “Beethoven was a classical composer. He started as a student of [Austrian composer Joseph] Haydn, but he had such a forceful personality and an amazing, audacious imagination. He bent the whole of music history. He started as a Haydn follower, and he ended up being a romantic hero.”
The ensemble will include Hanani joined by pianist Fabio Bidini, violinists Kobi Malkin and Grace Park, violist Luke Fleming, and double bassist Lizzie Burns. Baritone John Viscardi, who has sung with the New York City Opera, will perform arias from Charles Gounod’s French opera, “Roméo et Juliette.” William Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy has been adapted to music many times, including the oft-performed “Romeo and Juliet” ballet composed in 1935 by Russian pianist Sergei Prokofiev and an orchestral work by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Still, Gounod’s opera, which had its premiere at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris in 1867, remains sweepingly passionate with its grand melodies.
In addition to arias and sonatas, Close Encounters With Music will display prints of a few evocative works to enhance the mood further. “The Sleeping Gypsy” by post-Impressionist French painter Henri Rousseau is an 1897 oil painting depicting a passing lion in a moonlit desert and a slumbering mandolin player, unaware of any danger. Rousseau was a self-taught artist who painted in the flat style of Primitivism, with simple, two-dimensional compositions. The other hanging work will be “The Nightmare” by Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, who was a professor of painting at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Drawn to darkness and infatuated with the supernatural, Fuseli’s 1781 oil painting is a memorable depiction of a midnight haunting, with a demonic incubus hunched over a woman restless in sleep. The painting was prominently featured in the 1986 period film “Gothic,” a fictional account of Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin’s fateful stay with Lord Byron at Villa Diodati. Hanini fittingly described Fuseli’s beguiling work as “a pre-Freudian, psychosexual kind of terrible dream.”
For tickets to “Nocturne — Night and Dream” at Mahaiwe Performing Arts, go to www.cewm.org
Abstract art display in Wassaic for Upstate Art Weekend, July 18-21.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene from the Amenia garden tour.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else.
I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.