It started with The Walkers, a group of women who meet no matter what every morning at 7:15 in the Church of St. John in the Wilderness parking lot in Copake Falls, NY. These walkers are interesting people, Sharon Powers says. Community minded, smart, creative. So when they asked her to organize a small concert at the church year before last, Powers, a professional flutist and teacher, checked out the church acoustics (“magical,” she found) and said yes. She played Debussy’s mournful “Syrinx,” she recalls, and a Handel sonata. And she started thinking about bringing more performers here. Which is why this rustic piece of 19th-century Gothic Revival (designed by Richard Upjohn) rang with Mozart, Ibert, Joplin and others last Sunday, in the latest in a series of Winds in the Wilderness Concerts organized by Powers and supported by lots of people in Copake Falls. “We want to please our audience,” Powers says, which accounts for her a-little-something-for-everybody approach to programming. At the latest concert, a quintet — Powers, flute; Ronald Lively, clarinet; Joanne Nelson-Unczur, oboe; Hohn Howland, French horn; and Zafer Leo Ponter, bassoon — opened with Mozart’s brilliant overture to “The Marriage of Figaro,” transcribed for winds, of course. This version was appropriately heraldic, like the original scoring, but nicely transparent, too. The way chamber music ought to be. You can hear who is playing every line. A romantic piece by a rarely heard 19th-century composer, August Klughardt (1847-1902), followed, then “Three Brief Pieces” by Jacques Ibert (1890-1962), gave the bassoon its chance to shine, and then a masterful and sensuous tango, “Oblivion,” by Argentine-born composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) stole the show. With its Middle Eastern strains and Latin rhythm, and baroque shapes and just plain sultry aura this work, which has been arranged for a variety of instruments, from a quartet of cellos to a quintet of woodwinds was remarkable. And, finally, Powers led the group playing Scott Joplin’s (1867-1917) “Maple Leaf Rag,” something to send people out the door in good spirits, she says. More concerts are in the works, the next on April 10. And though the performers are under rehearsed, the mission to bring fine music to this very small community, and the will to celebrate inventive and fascinating composers make these concerts a pleasure.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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