Crescendo is an award-winning music organization based in Lakeville, Connecticut, which will present two concerts with festive Baroque holiday music for chorus, soloists, and orchestra on Dec. 28 and 29. The program brings comfort, joy, and a sense of wonder to listeners and celebrates unity, love, and hope through the power of music.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio stands at the center of the program. Cantatas by his predecessors and contemporaries showcase the festive themes of Advent, Christmas, and the New Year.
The Crescendo Chorus of thirty singers is joined by soprano Paulina Francisco (Canada), countertenor Nicholas Tamagna (Germany), tenor Gene Stenger (Connecticut), bass-baritone Douglas Williams (Massachusetts), and Crescendo Period Instrument Orchestra with musicians from New York City and Boston. The performances are led by Crescendo’s founding artistic director, Christine Gevert.
“Baroque music appeals directly to our emotions. It is the foundation of most of the music we hear nowadays. These compositions incorporate melodies, rhythms, and even forms from folk music. The cantatas are full of dance rhythms, and familiar tunes, which makes them very accessible to our ears. Even without being a classical music fan or choral music lover, it is hard to not be cheered up by forty voices and fifteen instruments singing music that has great harmonic progressions, and beautiful melodies,” Gevert explained.
Crescendo’s concerts will take place at Trinity Episcopal Church in Lime Rock Dec. 28 and 29.Provided
“The natural trumpets and period timpani are played by experts, and their sound is very solemn and lively at the same time. The Christmas cantatas were composed for the most important moment in the church celebrations. The period instruments used in these works have a sound that is a bit more transparent, and perhaps differentiated than the instruments we hear in modern orchestras, and they also have very unique colors. That makes them perfect to accompany the human voice,” she added.
Gevert was raised in Chile and lived in Europe for twelve years. She had been thinking of moving to Boston in the early 2000s but found the Early Music scene there difficult to break into as a foreigner. Luckily for local audiences, she found her way to the Northwest Corner.
“I met the minister of Trinity Church Lime Rock at a meditation retreat in Rishikesh, India, and she let me know that the small Episcopal parish had many music-loving members, and that the music director position was opening up. I applied, and was hired in October of 2001. It took a bit to get the music program going, but I was able to constitute Crescendo here in the fall of 2003, and our audience, chorus and instrumentalists came immediately also from the adjacent areas in New York and Massachusetts. We became an independent 501 (c)(3) organization in 2006,” Gevert says.
Leading ensembles and producing events comes with its own set of challenges. Musicians are not typically educated or trained in management, marketing, and fundraising for arts organizations.
“You need to learn everything at the same time while leading the artistic part of the organization. Everything is done on a shoe-string budget. It was always my goal to bring the very best professionals to our programs, and to pay them a just fee. So most of our funds are used for that, and very little is left for management, marketing, and development. Understanding the functioning of a not-for-profit organization is a journey that has many unexpected challenges and obstacles. Learning to be a leader is not easy in any discipline,” Gevert explained.
“Adoration of the Magi,” by 17th century artist Artemisia Gentileschi. Provided
Gevert feels that society has changed since Covid, with many people still reluctant to attend live performances. The renewal of audience members, supporters, and amateur musicians is more important than ever.
“We have always offered free music education to students and young musicians at Crescendo, and currently have a program in place that functions besides our concert series, and benefits young local musicians who receive one-on-one training,” she added.
Crescendo has been in Lakeville for 21 years in large part because of the many music lovers in the area. Early Music colleagues from the East Coast have also been great supporters.
“We hope that we will be able to celebrate the beauty and power of live music for many more years to come,” said Gevert.
The concerts will take place on Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024 at 4 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church, 484 Lime Rock Rd., Lakeville, CT, and on Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024 at 4 p.m. at Saint James Place, 352 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA.
Tickets are available online at www.crescendomusic.org, or on a first come, first served basis at the door, 45 minutes prior to the concert.
Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.