Maverick2014program

IN THIS ISSUE: 2014 Summer Schedule Maverick in the 21st Century A Message from the Director Writing the Program Notes What Else Happened in 1916 Music Goes Back to Nature The Maverick Concerts Changed My Life Circa 1942 The Maverick Photographers A Child of the Maverick The Maverick Horse Young People’s Schedule

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Music in the Woods Since 1916

We Are Proud To Support The Maverick Concerts David Gubits Marilyn Janow Dr. Edward Leavitt Stephen McGrath Lawrence Posner Angela P. Schapiro Susan Rizwani David F. Segal Sondra Siegel Jane Velez Willetta Warberg David Weibe

Table of Contents Board of Directors...................................................... 2 2014 Summer Schedule............................................. 2 The Maverick in the 21st Century............................... 3 A Message from Music Director Alexander Platt .....................................................4 – 5

Carl Lindin

Writing the Program Notes....................................6 – 9 1916 Time Line........................................................ 10 Music Goes Back to Nature................................12 – 15 Hervey White’s Maverick Festivals Changed My Life...............................................16 – 17 Circa 1942........................................................18 – 19 Maverick’s Photographers..................................20 – 21 A Child of the Maverick....................................22 – 23 The Maverick Horse................................................. 24 Young People’s Concert Schedule............................. 25

Contributors

Writers: Mary Fairchild, Alexander Platt, Miriam Villchur Berg, Alan Updegraff, Jean Lasher Gaede, Elsa Kimball, Cornelia Rosenblum, and Robin Raymond.

Editor: David F. Segal Graphic Design & Production: Katie Jellinghaus

Restored Carl Lindin portrait of Hervey White

Photos & Illustrations

Cover: Maverick at Night, Dion Ogust Inside Front Cover: Simon Russell.

This page; Michael Densen at work and the restored Carl Lindin painting of Hervey White, photographed by Angela P. Shapiro.

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

Michael Densen, fine art framer and conservator, and Chief of the Woodstock Fire Department, at work restoring Carl Lindin’s portrait of Maverick Founder Hervey White. The portrait will once again occupy its place of honor at the front of the Hall this summer.

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Board of Directors

CHAIRMAN David F. Segal

VICE-CHAIR David Gubits

TREASURER Lawrence Posner

SECRETARY Dr. Edward Leavitt

BOARD

MEMBERS

CHAIR

EMERITA

Marilyn Janow Stephen McGrath Susan Rizwani (Former Chair) Angela P. Schapiro Sondra Siegel Jane Velez Willetta Warberg David Wiebe

Cornelia Rosenblum

2014 Summer Schedule SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 11:00 AM Young People’s Concert • CELLIST ERICA PICKHARDT & FRIENDS

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 4:00 PM MODIGLIANI QUARTET Saint-Saëns, Schumann, Ravel

SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 6:30 PM ACTORS & WRITERS • Short plays, poems, monologues, & songs about beasts domesticated & feral (Catering by Oriole 9)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 8:30 PM STEVE GORN & FRIENDS A Twilight Concert of Indian Ragas (Catering by Oriole 9)

SUNDAY, JUNE 29, 4:00 PM SHANGHAI QUARTET, BENJAMIN HOCHMAN, piano Haydn, Bright Sheng, Janáček, Dvořák

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 11:00 AM Young People’s Concert AMERNET STRING QUARTET & FRIENDS Prokofiev: Peter & the Wolf

SATURDAY, JULY 5, 6:30 PM BENJAMIN VERDERY, guitar • Music of the Americas (Catering by Oriole 9)

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 8:00 PM Jazz at the Maverick PERRY BEEKMAN & FRIENDS The George Gershwin Songbook (Catering by Oriole 9)

SUNDAY, JULY 6, 4:00 PM CALDER QUARTET • Adès, Janáček, Beethoven SATURDAY, JULY 12, 11:00 AM Young People’s Concert • KIM & REGGIE HARRIS, folksingers & storytellers SATURDAY, JULY 12, 6:30 PM Jazz at the Maverick • LARA DOWNES, piano SUNDAY, JULY 13, 4:00 PM ENSO STRING QUARTET FREDERIC CHIU, piano • Strauss, Schulhoff, Mozart, Schmidt SATURDAY, JULY 19, 11:00 AM Young People’s Concert ELIZABETH MITCHELL & FAMILY SATURDAY, JULY 19, 6:30 PM Jazz at the Maverick HARLEM STRING QUARTET Corea, Borodin, Piston, Marsalis (Catering by Oriole 9) SUNDAY, JULY 20, 4:00 PM DUO PARNAS, TIM KANTOR, viola Beethoven, Norman, Dohnányi

Renee Samuels

SATURDAY, JULY 26, 6:30 PM ZUILL BAILEY, cello, NATASHA PAREMSKI, piano • Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Strauss (Catering by Oriole 9)

Cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Simone Dinnerstein rehearse onstage at the Maverick.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, 4:00 PM AMERNET STRING QUARTET JON KLIBONOFF, piano Mahler, Dvořák, Schoenberg, Korngold SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 6:30 PM ACTORS & WRITERS • Speak, Memory: Memoirs by writers & performers past & present (Catering by Oriole 9) SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 4:00 PM TRIO SOLISTI Beethoven, Liebermann, Brahms SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 6:30 PM CHAMBER ORCHESTRA CONCERT ALEXANDER PLATT, conductor; LUCY SCHAUFER & MARIA TODARO mezzo-sopranos; ENSEMBLE AUREA Revueltas, Holt, Ginastera, de Falla (Catering by Oriole 9) SUNDAY, AUGUST 24, 4:00 PM JUPITER STRING QUARTET ILYA YAKUSHEV, piano Mozart, Strauss, Bach/Busoni, Brahms SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 8:00 PM Jazz at the Maverick ANTHONY WILSON GUITAR QUARTET (Catering by Oriole 9)

SUNDAY, JULY 27, 4:00 PM LATITUDE 41 • Dvořák, Platt, Schubert

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31, 4:00 PM PACIFICA QUARTET Carter, Mendelssohn, Beethoven

SATURDAY, AUG 2, 11:00 AM Young People’s Concert MARC BLACK, folksinger

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 8:00 PM HAPPY TRAUM & FRIENDS • An evening of great folk music (Catering by Oriole 9)

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 8:00 PM Jazz at the Maverick • FRED HERSCH, piano, with JULIAN LAGE, guitar (Catering by Oriole 9)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 4:00 PM A CONCERT FOR THE FRIENDS OF MAVERICK • AMERICAN STRING QUARTET • Haydn, Mendelssohn, Brahms

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Maverick in the 21st Century:

Honoring a Storied History, Preparing for a Splendid Future

By Mary Fairchild were few other such opportunities elsewhere in the country.”

Gently encouraged by Hervey White, first-chair symphonists and established soloists began coming to Woodstock.

Hervey described that first season: “Last Sunday nearly four hundred people, including several farm wives and two millionaires, heard Beethoven, Arensky, Debussy, and Chopin.”

In 1924, Hervey commissioned John Flannagan, a brilliantly talented, iconoclastic, and penniless sculptor, to carve the iconic Maverick horse. Using an ax as the major tool, the entire monumental statue was carved from the trunk of a chestnut tree in only a few days.

“Hervey had a way of getting things done,” according to Mr. Barzin. And Hervey’s vision redounds to our felicity. His music chapel still stands at the foot of a wooded rise, improved here and there, buttressed, trussed, reroofed.

Artists don’t spend the whole summer here, but rather swoop in for a day or a weekend. The resident spirits are perhaps more Bach than bacchante, but appreciative audiences still express their delight by stamping their feet on the tympanum of the old wooden floor.

As Allan Updegraff, novelist of Woodstock, observed in 1916, “Inside, the afternoon twilight, let in by the mass of windows… was softened by ivory-tinted walls. Big uprights of unbarked logs paneled the room, and… 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.”

Some things haven’t changed a bit. A summer thunderstorm gets your attention and ups the ante for a string quartet. A moth startles with its flutter. Birdsong fills the caesurae between movements, the non-silence invoked by John Cage in 4’33”, fourand-a-half minutes (and a bit) that premiered at Maverick in 1952.

“The Maverick” was the collective description for the colony of unabashed artists that flourished at the edge of Woodstock’s artistic main drag from 1905 until about 1944: the term was both pejorative and affectionate. The Maverick Festival was an annual bacchanale conceived—by Hervey White, founder and artistic elemental of the Maverick—as a Bohemian carnival to be held on the Colony’s grounds under the August full moon.

The idea of a music season to be held conjointly with the general festival shenanigans dates from 1915, when Hervey had the idea of holding classical music performances as a way of raising money.

(This seems an extraordinary notion today, when we fight for every penny of support.) The initial purpose was to pay for a well to be dug, but the festival and concerts were such a success that the whole undertaking became the main fundraising vehicle for building projects, taxes, and other operating expenses for the Colony. In 1929 the New York Herald Tribune reported six thousand people in attendance, all misbehaving to a greater or lesser degree.

When Hervey White got serious about his idea of ongoing music in the summer woodland, he had in mind “chamber music in a rustic music chapel, among tall trees at the foot of a hill… 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.” Leon Barzin, founder, conductor, and music director of the National Orchestral Association and the original music director of the New York City Ballet, worked on the hall when he was sixteen or seventeen, according to an article he wrote in 1975, and the project was completed entirely by volunteers, without the intervention of an architect or paid laborers.

In the early days of music at the Maverick, the regular season for orchestral musicians was more like an academic calendar: 32 weeks, with four months of the year open to the questionable pleasures of unemployment. Mr. Barzin wrote that in the early years of the 20th century, there was an insidious prejudice in serious musical circles against American musicians. “Everything musical had to have the European hallmark,” he said. “Woodstock was a beginning for many young American musicians…. There

“...nearly four hundred people, including several farm wives and two millionaires, heard Beethoven, Arensky, Debussy, and Chopin.”

I wonder whatever became of Hervey’s well...

Above: Earnest Brace, Florence Cramer, Reeves Brace, Konrad Cramer, Helen Walters, Eugenie Gershoy, Harry Gottlieb, Margie Barnes. From the Jean Lasher Gaede and Elizabeth “Fritzi” Striebel Archive, courtesy of the Center for Photography at Woodstock.

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A Message from Maverick’s Music Director

him, among Central Europeans and expatriates, at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leoš Janácček, Antonín Dvořák, Erwin Schulhoff, Franz Schmidt, Ernö von Dohnányi, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Erich Wolfgang Korngold… these are some of the musical lights whose lives and work we’ll be surveying.

Following our 2013 centennial tribute to the English composer Benjamin Britten, 2014 marks the Maverick’s renewal of its long-standing commitment to American music. In a summerlong series titled “American Landscapes,” we’ll hear a plethora of performances of new and recent American repertoire, from cutting-edge works of young composers to those of America’s own master of the string quartet, Elliott Carter.

A highlight of the summer is always the Chamber Orchestra Concert, which this year is on August 23, the program titled “In the House of Don Manuel: An Extravaganza Celebrating the Friendship of Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca.”

That program includes de Falla’s suite from The Three-Cornered Hat and music by Silvestre Revueltas, Alberto Ginastera, and Simon Holt. Featured performers that evening are not one but two mezzo-sopranos, Lucy Schaufer and Maria Todaro; pianist Jenny Lin; and members of Ensemble Aurea, who were a hit at Maverick last year during our Benjamin Britten celebration.

Of course, there is a bountiful roster of familiar and cherished works that we know and love from the chamber music repertoire.

Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Ravel, Haydn, Schubert, SaintSaëns, Brahms, Mendelssohn… all there for our delight.

We’re also delighted to welcome a number of artists making their Maverick debuts this season. The young Israeli-American pianist Benjamin Hochman, who has been garnering spectacular acclaim here and abroad, joins our old friends the Shanghai Quartet to open the season on June 29th with, among other things, Dvořák’s sublime A-major piano quintet. The genrebending guitar virtuoso Benjamin Verdery joins us on July 5 for an eclectic recital of music of the Americas. The accomplished and infectiously exciting Harlem String Quartet perform at Maverick for the first time on July 19, and the young Parnas sisters—Madalyn on the violin, Cicely on the cello— take their first Maverick bow, with violist Timothy Kantor, on July 20. The Modigliani Quartet of Paris, who weave balance, transparency, and symphonic comprehension into a confident and self-assured whole, join us August 3.

Indian bamboo flute master Steve Gorn returns to the Maverick with a twilight concert of Indian classical music on August 8, and there are four evenings of jazz. The Harlem String Quartet’s July 19 concert includes works by Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis, and on July 12 jazz pianist Lara Downes brings us a solo concert of her interpretations of

Dion Ogust

Alexander Platt

Jennifer Girard

Maverick’s 2014 season promises, as always, a prodigious feast of great music, performed by superb artists from around the world.

The exciting and eclectic Jazz at the Maverick series returns, as do the free Saturday morning Young People’s Concerts, of which this year there are five.

This ninety-ninth summer will be a beacon of uniquely compelling programming. On the one hand, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great German composer Richard Strauss (1864–1949), whose long musical life stretched from the final glorious flowering of German Romanticism to the societal, physical, and spiritual chaos during and after the fall of the Third Reich. We will present an exploration not only of Strauss’s chamber music but also of the rich trove of music that flourished around 4

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Alexander Platt conducting the Maverick Chamber Players

music made famous by the great chanteuse Billie Holiday. The great Fred Hersch returns on August 2, with guitarist Julian Lage, and Maverick audience favorite Perry Beekman joins us on August 9 with a program of songs from the George Gershwin Songbook.

And a special delight on the Jazz at the Maverick series comes in August 30, when the Anthony Wilson Guitar Quartet performs Anthony’s Four Seasons Suite on John Monteleone’s four gorgeous “Seasons” guitars.

There are five free Young People’s Concerts this summer, all on Saturday mornings at 11:00. Erica Pickhardt performs on June 28, Elizabeth Mitchell & Family on July 19, and Marc Black on August 2. On August 9, the Amernet String Quartet and a couple of their friends perform their arrangement of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, with Yours Truly doing the honors as narrator. And we’re thrilled that renowned folksingers and storytellers Kim and Reggie Harris are here on July 12 to entertain our young audience.

This is Maverick’s 99th consecutive season of Music in the Woods. We are the carriers of a living legacy; we are a light in the forest. I’m proud to be a constituent of this unique and treasured piece of cultural history; it is an honor to be charged with undertakings that will bear us into our second century.

I look forward to seeing you many times this summer.

Yours in music,

“...the Anthony Wilson Guitar Quartet performs Anthony’s Four Seasons Suite on John Monteleone’s four gorgeous ‘Seasons’ guitars.”

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Writing the Program Notes

Vincent Wagner was the artistic director of the Maverick Concerts from 1985 until his untimely death in 2002. The year before he died, he asked me to take over the job of writing program notes. I knew Vincent well, but I was also given a great recommendation by the previous program annotator, Prof. Mary Jane Corry. I had taken some music history courses given by Dr. Corry at SUNY New Paltz, and she knew I enjoyed research and could put words together.

Vincent and Mary Jane gave me a lot of support and encouragement in those first few months. Mary Jane went over a few drafts of my notes, correcting my rookie mistakes. Vincent recommended that I buy a copy of Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (first published in 1929), which gives descriptive commentary on each movement of the important chamber works of the major composers. I learned a lot by reading Cobbett’s notes while listening to the music, but over time I found myself disagreeing with his analysis, with his choices of what was helpful to know about a particular piece.

World-class musicians look forward to playing at the Maverick year after year, in large part because of the sophisticated audiences. They may not all be musical cognoscenti, but Maverick audiences are very discerning in their appreciation of quality, in both composition and performance.

Audiences of Mozart’s time were well versed in music theory and music analysis, and they followed with interest the key changes, rhythmic variation, and tonal shifts composers used in the development sections of their works. Today’s audiences, for the most part, have neither the Former Music Director musical education nor the inclination Vincent Wagner to notice such structural details. But they are still fully cognizant of the melodic and harmonic flow, the emotional impact, and the overall direction the music takes.

Maverick audiences may not be familiar with the technical term “cadential material,” but they know instinctively when a section is moving towards its conclusion.

I decided that my job was not to be too technical, but to point out highlights that might not be immediately obvious.

The nicest compliment I ever received on my notes came from Munir Rizwani, a staunch and enthusiastic Maverick concertgoer and the late husband of Maverick’s former chairperson, Susan Rizwani. Munir said to me, after hearing a late Beethoven string quartet, “I read what you wrote about the movement, and then I listened to the movement, and everything you said was there! It all happened, just like you said!”

The next time you listen to a piece of chamber music, spend a little time listening for the elements that make up the work.

Does the first movement (usually an Allegro) start with a fast

David F. Segal

by Miriam Villchur Berg

David F. Segal

Program annotator Miriam Villchur Berg

“...Munir said to me, after hearing a late Beethoven string quartet, ‘I read what you wrote about the movement, and then I listened to the movement, and everything you said was there! It all happened, just like you said!’ ” 6

Renee Samuels

The Jupiter String Quartet with pianist Ilya Yakushev

tempo, or is there a slow introduction? At any given moment, does one instrument stand out like a soloist, with the others mostly accompanying? Or do different members of the ensemble take turns in the spotlight? Or are they playing together, with each having an equally important part? Is the texture spare or full? Are the instruments playing high or low in their ranges? Is the movement in a major or a minor key?

There are many aspects of a musical composition that one could discuss: melody, harmony, rhythm, meter, texture, form, etc. I listen to each piece and decide which elements to stress—which can be easily heard, and can therefore be guideposts for the listener. When I use musical terms, I define them each time, even if I have defined them in many sets of program notes before. I think most of the audience knows by now that pizzicato means plucked, but I have to keep in mind that there are probably some newcomers in the group, and I have to respect them as well.

Other terms I continue to define include tremolo (fast bowing on one pitch), triplets (playing three notes in the space of one beat), and descant (a counter-melody, usually higher than the main melody). I assume that people know that adagio means slow, that presto means fast, and that allegro moderato lies somewhere in between. I do translate any unusual tempo markings, like durchweg leise zu halten (kept slowly throughout) and meno mosso ma senza rallentando (less quickly but without slowing down—a neat trick; a friend actually spotted this instruction recently in a choral score).

“The next time you listen to a piece of chamber music, spend a little time listening for the elements that make up the work.”

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2003, he has offered audiences his educated and unique view of I like to point out triple versus duple meters. A triple meter the world of chamber music. Unlike most program directors, he is one that can be divided into three beats, such as 3/4, and is is not content to let ensembles (or their managers) dictate what less commonly used than the duple meters like 4/4 or 2/4. In pieces they will be playing in a particular season. Alexander the Common Practice Period (roughly the seventeenth through decides on one or more themes for the summer, and puts together the early part of the twentieth century), the minuet or scherzo a list of important pieces that movement is always in a triple meter combine to illustrate those (to be precise, for you sticklers, it themes. Some years it is a can also be in a compound duple composer’s anniversary, such meter such as 6/8). That waltzas Samuel Barber (2010), like rhythm gives the movement a Leonard Bernstein (2011), dancing and lighthearted feeling, or Benjamin Britten (2013), whether it is one of Haydn’s happy or a national style, such as minuets or Beethoven’s weightier French music (2012) or this scherzos. summer’s American (that is, When I was first starting to North and South American) write the notes, I asked Vincent Landscapes. He asks the whether it would be appropriate for groups to play specific me to inject a little music history pieces, and they agree. This into them, and I gave the example of is unusual in chamber music the evolution of the minuet into the Pianist Frederic Chiu and Alexander Platt series, and it makes Maverick scherzo. I remember Vincent’s eyes unique. If you miss a Maverick concert, you are missing a piece of lighting up. He said he thought that would be excellent, and then the whole picture that Alexander is painting for the audience. he added: “A lot of people in the audience don’t know the basics, My father, Edgar Villchur, was a devotee and supporter of but even for those who do, it never hurts to be reminded.” That the Maverick up until his death in 2011at the age of ninety-four. became one of my guiding principles: Explain the music in a way He loved music, especially string quartets, and attended Maverick that a novice will learn, but an expert won’t be bored. concerts on a regular basis. He knew that his musical education Since Alexander Platt became Maverick’s music director in

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Rosemary Villchur Simon Russell

Inventor, educator, audio pioneer, and longtime Maverick supporter Edgar Villchur

was limited. Like most untrained listeners, his ears would focus almost exclusively on the melody. But my father could tell that he was missing the nuances and structural elements of the music, so he devised a way to hear all the parts.

He was an engineer and a scientist, which meant two things: First, he wanted to understand the construction of things in the world; and second, he knew how to devise a system for revealing that construction. What he came up with was to focus on listening to the cello line. The first violin’s high melody didn’t disappear, but it became part of a more complex whole. My father said that by concentrating on the cello, everything fell into place, and he understood the music more deeply and completely. He once described his system to Clive Greensmith, the cellist of the Tokyo String Bassist Dave Holland Quartet, who agreed that it was a clever way to hear the components of the work and better understand it. I recommend it to listeners, no matter what their level of musical knowledge.

Understanding the elements of structure, recognizing the various musical techniques, noting the composer’s choices—all these observations can enhance the listener’s experience. With each piece played by the world-class artists of the Maverick there is something new to learn and something wonderful to enjoy. Or, if you prefer, please feel free to ignore the notes and just let the glorious sounds wash over you.

DR. BRUCE JAY MILNER

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It was a leap year, 1916 (MCMXVI), and the Maverick Concert Hall opened for its first-ever concert One million soldiers killed or wounded during the Battle of the Somme. Russian forces defeat troops of the Ottoman Empire in Armenia. German saboteurs blow up munitions depot on Black Tom island in New York Harbor. D.W. Griffith releases Intolerance. Margaret Sanger opens the first U.S. birth control clinic. First forty-hour work week officially begins in the Endicott-Johnson factories of New York’s Southern Tier.

The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed. Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents its first concert; Gustav Holst composes The Planets, Opus 32; Carl Nielsen premieres the Symphony No. 4. Other 1916 premieres: 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; and Heitor Villa-Lobos: Second Cello Sonata.

Pancho Villa attacks New Mexico; President Woodrow Wilson sends sends 12,000 U.S. troops over the border into Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa.

It’s an election year, and Democratic President Woodrow Wilson defeats Charles E. Hughes. Physicians perform the first successful blood transfusion using stored blood. 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.

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

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. Deaths in 1916: authors Henry James and Jack London, playwright Sholem Aleichem, King Otto of Bavaria, composer Max Reger, and painters Thomas Eakins, Georges Lacombe, and Odilon Redon.

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.

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.

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Maverick founder Hervey White, with the Concert Hall under construction

The Maverick Legacy

The Maverick is thriving today, thanks to the love of its friends.

Many of these have honored Maverick’s long history with gifts from their own estates. A gift from you to the future of Maverick comes with a promise from us, that we will continue to honor your love for the best music in the world. Your appreciation will live on, into our second century and beyond. You can contribute to that heritage with a gift to the Maverick in the form of a legacy bequest, which will both honor the past and ensure the future. A gift to the Maverick as part of your estate planning serves a twofold purpose: It endows an ongoing legacy of music that will move and inspire audiences in the generations that follow. And it will help preserve our unique and historic building and surrounding forest for the future. Senior Board Member David Gubits can answer any questions you may have, and assist in all matters of gifting.

David can be reached at dbg@jacobowitz.com or 845-764-4285.

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SUNDAY, JULY 30, 1916 © The New York Times

Allan Updegraff

Music Goes Back To Nature

Up in a wild bit of Catskill woodland, “I was just thinking that I’d devoted Hervey White, once novelist and poet, and most of the last ten years of my life to now also musical director, architect, and high finance,” Mr. White went on, and high financier, is presiding over the paused to regard the undiminished spot testing out of a musical enterprise that with pained surprise; the spot looked like he has been some ten years preparing. printer’s ink, and the corner of a footThere have been three tests of it now, on power printing press, apparent through the last three Sundays: the first was more the upper half of the wide Dutch doors than satisfactory, and each successive test of his cabin, suggested that it might be registered, approximately, a 20 percent printer’s ink. The hand basin in which improvement on the preceding one. From Mr. White was doing his washing did not all the nearby Catskill summering places, seem to measure up to printer’s ink. He and from some at a considerable distance, applied more yellow soap, and continued: people are coming to the music chapel “My reasons for wearing this purple that Mr. White has built on his farm in Russian blouse, for instance, are high the Woodstock Valley to hear the eminent financial—not at all a desire to make musicians Mr. White has gathered play myself conspicuous. A purple Russian the best chamber music, which he selects blouse is comfortable, does not break the himself. line of the body awkwardly at the hips, On the day when Mr. White was and is easily renovated by washing and interviewed for the purposes of the present hanging on a bush in the sun. For the story, the owner-builder-director was very same high financial reasons I do my own busy. It was a Saturday afternoon, and he housework and live in the woods. High was washing out his best purple sateen finance, I was thinking, consists in getting Russian blouse in preparation for his the good things of life without money. I Sunday appearance at the chapel. humbly opine that I have met with some “What I’m proudest of in connection success along that line. with this whole matter,” he announced, “When I invested in this farm, ten philosophically rubbing yellow soap on years ago,” said Mr. White, dashing a few a bad spot, “is my development as a high drops of honest sweat from his brow and The original New York Times article financier. Nearly everybody said I couldn’t resuming his offensive against the spot put this over without money. High finance is a great discovery. We in a manner that suggested much tenacity of soul, “I did it with are living in a remarkable age.” the idea of gathering some good musicians during the Summer Mr. White has been called a number of things, but never a months and giving chamber music in a rustic music chapel high financier. Some learned members of the Woodstock artist’s among tall trees at the foot of a hill. Chamber music, by its nature, colony speak of him as “The American Tolstoy.” They are deceived is degraded except when it is given by selected musicians in a by the fact that he wears a Russian blouse, flappy cotton trousers, rustic music chapel among tall trees at the foot of a hill. The farm much hair and beard, and lives a contemplative bachelor existence cost $2,000, and I happened to have nearly $200 in cash at the in a cabin of his own building. As a matter of fact, he is much time, so turned that over to the owner. I suppose a good high more nearly akin to our own Henry David Thoreau. Take three financier would have kept his $200, but I was just beginning, you parts of Thoreau, including Thoreau’s poetical gift and ability to remember. live on nothing a year, add a passion for the world’s best chamber

“Thus I secured a farm, with a proper hill and tall trees, and a music, a gift in the direction of arts and crafts architecture, an farmhouse that would do to live in until I could build something inability to be worried, and a quiet sense of humor, and you have better; but I needed food, a music hall, and musicians. an approximation of Hervey White of Woodstock. Even such a

“Therefore I explained to a good neighbor who owned a sobriquet as “The Oscar Hammerstein of the Catskills” fits him far sawmill that I wanted to have some musicians up at my place Continued on page 13 better than “The American Tolstoy.”

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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 quiet 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; 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

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some of his compositions this 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 sixpaned 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.

Dion Ogust

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

Before an evening concert

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 nationwide tour on May 15 last. Mr. Bauerkeller is half-English, halfGerman, 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

“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.”

“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 14

“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 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.”

Peggy Vinton Brown

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.

moving ahead in a new season at maverick.

Sustainable Architecture and Landscape Design mindful of the genius of place.

STEPHEN TILLY, Architect www.stillyarchitect.com

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Hervey White’s Maverick Festivals Changed My Life

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

By Jean Lasher Gaede

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

Above: Jean Lasher, 6, and her sister Eileen, 10, dressed up in festival garb. From the Maverick Notebooks at Woodstock Artists Association & Museum. Right: A more recent photo of Jean Gaede

“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.”

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Early Maverick merrymakers

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

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.

Oh, this life. When people ask, as they always do in Woodstock, “What do you do?”

I reply, “I applaud!”.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2

8:00 PM - Festival Stage, Parish Field Opening Gala: Flamenco

10:00 AM - Mama’s Boy Coffee House Latte lecture: About the Barber of Seville 11:30 AM - Rail Road Museum Story Telling 11:30 AM - St Francis de Sale, Catholic Church–The Cambridge Chamber Singers 1:30 PM - St Francis de Sale, Catholic Church–Clarimonde by Frédéric Chaslin & Libretto By P.h. Fisher 4:45 PM - STS Playhouse International Pianist Justin Kolb & Carey Harrison 8:00 PM - Festival Stage, Parish Field The Barber of Seville Opera-Buffa 11:00 PM - Late Lounge

THURSDAY, JULY 31 5:00 PM - Wesleyan Church Free Workshop 8:00 PM - Festival Stage, Parish Field Voices of Distinction

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1 10:00 AM - Mama’s Boy Coffee House Latte Lecture 11:30 AM - Rail Road Museum Story Telling: For young & not so young 2:30 PM - STS Playhouse, The 7 Favorite Maladies of Ludwig Van Beethoven 4:15 PM - Location TBD–Free Public Workshop: Learn to Sing in Harmony 4:15 PM - Methodist Church, Free Public Masterclass: Acting for Singers 5:30 PM - Festival Stage, Parish Field The Art of the Cantor 8:00 PM - O Sole Mio! Choirs & Orchestra 10:30 PM - Late Lounge

10:00 AM - Mama’s Boy Coffee House Latte Lecture: The Art of I castratti 1:30 PM - Wesleyan Church, Gospel 2:30 PM - STS Playhouse, The 7 Favorite Maladies of Ludwig Van Beethoven 4:30 PM - Festival Stage Misa Criolla–Choir, Orchestra & Soloist

(845)586-3588

for details visit - PhoeniciaVoiceFest.org

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3

118 Tinker Street or: PO Box 219 Woodstock, NY 12498 Phone: (845)679-2488 Fax: (845)679-8074 Jeff@JPSiegel.com JPSIEGEL.com

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From: Music and Musicians, 1936

One of the happiest concerts of the summer, both as to program and performance, took place at the Maverick last Sunday.

Messrs. Taylor, Swan, Finckel, and the Brothers Britt—Horace and Roger—presented the greatest of all Schubert’s chamber works, the quintet in C, Op. 163, written the last year of the composer’s life. The solemnity and nobility of the divinely beautiful adagio of itself seems a special benediction.

This was followed by the sprightly and ingratiating Boccherini quintet, the one with the famous staccato passage for the first cello part, delivered by the equally famous Britt staccato.

Then Hervey White requested the audience to keep their seats and wait for a surprise. The surprise materialized as the rarest, most precious gem of an event that has happened in Woodstock almost ever. Nadia, violinist, age seven, and George, cellist, age eleven, children of Mr. and Mrs. Boris Koutzen, played with their mother, Inez Koutzen, pianist, the first Haydn trio.

Without the slightest trace of child prodigy, display, or even any apparent awareness that such a thing as an audience existed, the young “artists” did a charming piece of real ensemble playing, perfect in tempo, rhythm, and melodic line, giving and taking in proper style. They—the children—played from memory (no small achievement in itself), and executed the technical difficulties of the score with accuracy, control, and perfect ease. One of the most enchanting things about it was the perfect composure of the mother at the piano. It is to be expected, we suppose, that those children should be gifted musically. Their father is a distinguished

Dion Ogust

By Elsa Kimball

Before an evening concert

“It was unforgettable. At the close there was scarcely a dry eye in the hall, and all who heard it will cherish a moving and inspiring memory.”

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The Koutzen Family, courtesy of the Woodstock Library

violinist, and the trio on the platform, mother and children, was literally the Britt family unto the third and fourth generation. The boy George already draws a lovely, full-bodied tone on his cello, and the diminutive Nadia, her tiny fingers like so many delicate stems upon the strings, becomes actually suffused with a warm radiance when she plays—immersed in the beauty of the music.

It was unforgettable. At the close there was scarcely a dry eye in the hall, and all who heard it will cherish a moving and inspiring memory.

The announcement of next week’s program was deferred till later in the week. We suspect and hope that means that William Kroll, who returned Tuesday from a hugely successful tour with the Coolidge Quartet in Mexico, will take part in the concert.

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Maverick Concerts Photographers

Fine art photography is an expression of a true artist’s vision. No small part of the Maverick’s appeal lies in the rustic and uncommon splendor of the hall and grounds. Not only is it one of the best places in the world to hear chamber music, it is also uniquely beautiful. And like any object of beauty, it is always different, yet always the same. Its changes imperceptibly each day, as the light changes slowly from bright sun to the softness of evening, and suddenly you realize that what you’re looking at has evolved.

Dion Ogust

Numerous creative artists have shared their photograph talents to capture moments of beauty and history at the Maverick. We are very appreciative of the work of Bobbie Bernstein, Konrad Cramer (the Woodstock artist who created the iconic image of Hervey White), Dion Ogust, Simon Russell, Renee Samuels, Angela P. Schapiro, and Burt Weinstein. We are grateful to them all for their eloquent gifts of art.

Pianist Marc Peloquin

Bassist Dave Holland

Simon Russell

Renee Samuels

Bobby Bernstein

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DION OGUST photography

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Simon Russell

Maverick Colony and Festival Founder Hervey White; Konrad Cramer

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A Child of the Maverick

“I remember, I remember, the house where I was born, the little window where the sun, came peeping in at morn.”

As I think about these words written by Thomas Hood I am bombarded with images of growing up on the Maverick, and I feel like Alice In Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole shrinking to my eight-year-old size. It is a place where time collapses, and yet I have the sensation of expanding, as if seeing things again that have been long hidden.

Hervey White rented a small house in the woods above the concert hall (for fifty dollars a year) to my father, Henry Morton Robinson, a young writer, and his twenty-year-old wife, Gertrude.

I was brought there as a new-born baby. My earliest memory is that I was always barefoot and always outside. The Maverick Colony was my playground. The Maverick Horse carved by John Flanagan stood sentinel over me, rising as it did at the entrance to the Concert Hall road. It was my compass from which I could explore in any direction. I ran the forest floor with the certainty of a deer. I always thought (or did I pretend?) I was an Indian girl with long black braids. Somehow my mother always knew I was safe when I went out to play. Emmy Edwards, son of Eleanor and Emmett Edwards (a working artist in the Maverick Colony) was my exploring friend. Behind the Intelligentsia restaurant was a big quarry where we would catch tadpoles with our bare hands, put them in a mason jar and watch them become frogs. From there I would find the path to Wendell and Janey Jones’ house where they would give me a cookie or a slice of apple as I watched them paint. One morning Janey asked me if she could paint my portrait. It was not easy for me to sit still and pose for her.

During this time our family moved into what is now the white house across from the Concert Hall entrance. The family now included my younger sister, Hannele, and my little brother, Anthony Robinson. My mother would send me with a roast beef sandwich to give to Hervey White where he lived in his tiny house in a glade of myrtle. He and I never talked very much, but he loved to lie on his bed and listen to the musicians practicing behind his house. The concert hall was my North Star as I would follow the music through the trees and sit on a mossy knoll and listen. It was as natural as listening to the wind.

There were quite a few children my age on the Maverick during the late thirties: Georgie and Nadia Koutzen, Dickie Barzin, Johnny Nichols, Steven Finckel. I always loved walking barefoot up the dirt road to Steven’s house to listen to his father, George Finckel, playing the cello. The sounds

By Robin Raymond

“My earliest memory is that I was always barefoot and always outside. The Maverick Colony was my playground.”

Photos on this page: Top left- Painting by Jane Jones of Robin Raymond at 9 years old.

Left- Unknown, Florence Cramer, Margot Cramer Taylor, Konrad Cramer and Aileen Cramer. The Jean Lasher Gaede and Elizabeth “Fritzi” Striebel Archive, courtesy of the Center for Photography at Woodstock.

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coming from that instrument have thrilled me ever since. The concert pianist Vladamir Padwa gave me piano lessons and tried to navigate me through the world of chords, notes, and arpeggios. I think because my father was a writer it was words, not musical notes, that came more easily to me as a child.

My father taught me to read before I entered first grade, and for special occasions I had to write a poem or memorize one or write a story. But I feel it was the music from the concert hall floating through the trees that has sustained me all my life.

My father and mother established a tradition of inviting their artist friends for Sunday dinner at two o’clock. Wendy and Janey Jones, Hannah and Gene Ludins, Frank Mele, Doris Lee, Arnold Blanch, Joe Pollet, Raoul Hague, Amy and John Small all were family to me. My mother must have had a special connection with the butcher at Happy’s grocery store: “Give me

a really good roast beef this week, and oh, please throw in some suet for the birds.” Roast beef never tasted as sweet as it did on those Sunday dinners.

We could hear the musicians tuning up at the Concert Hall, so after dinner we would grab a blanket and some pillows and everyone would walk up the dirt road to the Concert Hall and listen under the trees. I grew up with music in my soul. It seemed to be sifting through the leaves, echoing off the bluestone ledges. It was as natural as the air I breathed. I was never aware of this unique environment because, in truth, I was living it.

One Sunday that I remember so well I saw my father leaning against a tree with his head on his arms and his shoulders heaving. Alarmed, I asked my mother, “Why is Daddy crying?” She put her hand on my arm and gently said to me, “Because the music is so beautiful.”

Those were the early years when the woods, the stones, the music seeped into my bloodstream. Now that I have returned to Woodstock after all these decades my memory feels the shock of recognition, and through this filter I am feeling home again. It is a return to the geography of my childhood where I felt great comfort and safety. Not too much has really changed. The dirt road to the Concert Hall is the same, although Hervey White’s house has dissolved into the luscious myrtle. The music still wafts through the trees, and my love of space and silence that surrounded me as a child of the woods is as strong as it ever was. The special sunlight that filters through the branches always bewitched me.

Poetry, painting, and music all seem blended together to become the DNA of my soul. And yes, I feel a quickening as I recall the first lines of Thomas Hood’s poem, “I remember, I remember, the house where I was born.”

“We could hear the musicians tuning up at the Concert Hall, so after dinner we would grab a blanket and some pillows and everyone would walk up the dirt road to the Concert Hall...”

Photos on this page: Left; Addie Risse, Gioja Stalforth Webster, Anita Stalforth, unknown.

Above; Dr. & Mrs.Downer with grandchildren Joan Goetz, Faith Goetz, and Lee Downer. The Jean Lasher Gaede and Elizabeth “Fritzi” Striebel Archive, courtesy of the Center for Photography at Woodstock.

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The Maverick Horse

By Cornelia Rosenblum

seen. When it was finished he went off and had another drink.”

The heroic sculpture standing eighteen feet high marked the entrance of the road to the concert hall (and the now-vanished theatre) for thirty-six years. For a while the sculpture had a little roof over it as protection from the elements but it began to weather alarmingly, and artist Emmet Edwards, a painter who knew Flannagan well, moved it into his nearby studio to protect it.

It remained there, hidden from view, for twenty years.

In 1979 through the generosity and cooperation of Edwards, the horse was moved on large wooden skids from Edwards’ studio to the stage of the Maverick Concert Hall. Woodstock sculptor Maury Colow undertook to stabilize the sculpture and mount it on a stone base. It is most appropriate that this mysterious and magical sculpture presides over the last and most enduring expression of Hervey White’s original Maverick.

Simon Russell

The name “Maverick” came to be used over the years for the collaborative colony for artists that Hervey White established on the outskirts of Woodstock. In Colorado in the 1890s, while visiting his sister, Hervey had been told of a white stallion living in freedom in the wild known locally as the “maverick horse.” In 1911 the maverick horse appeared as the hero of a poem Hervey wrote, “The Adventures of a Young Maverick.” It was a fitting symbol for everything that Hervey held dear—freedom and spirit and individuality.

John Flannagan, a brilliantly talented, iconoclastic (and penniless) sculptor, came to join the artists who spent summers in the Maverick. In the summer of 1924 Hervey White commissioned Flannagan to carve the Maverick Horse. Believing that all useful work

Bassist Dave Holland

was of value, and the work of an artist no more to be rewarded than any other, he paid the prevailing wage of fifty cents an hour. Using an ax as the major tool, the entire monumental piece was carved from the trunk of a chestnut tree in only a few days. The sculpture depicts the horse emerging from the outstretched hands of a man, who appears in turn to be emerging from the earth.

Hannah Small, who lived at the Maverick during the carving, remembers: “Everyone on the Maverick was watching.

They were fascinated. We loved everything that Flannagan did and we were terribly excited about it. I remember seeing him working; he was working frantically and he was doing the whole thing with an ax. It was the fastest work I’d ever

Sculptor of the Maverick horse, John Flannagan and a very young Linda Sweeney

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320 Maverick Road, Woodstock

Renee Samuels

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Klezmer musicians Alicia Svigals and Pete Rushefsky entertain a young Maverick audience.

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1430 Glasco Turnpike • Saugerties, NY 12477 woodstockdayschool.org 845-246-3744 Woodstock Day School is accredited by NYSAIS

SATURDAY, JULY 6, 11 AM KIM & REGGIE HARRIS Folksingers & Storytellers. Kim and Reggie have performed at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution, the International Children’s Festival in Canada, Boston’s Wang Center, and in festivals in the United States, Canada, and Italy.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 11 AM MARC BLACK, vocals and guitar This singer-songwriter is a Woodstock legend whose music blurs the line between adult and children’s entertainment.

SATURDAY, JULY 20, 11 AM ELIZABETH MITCHELL & FAMILY Elizabeth’s latest recording for kids, Blue Clouds, was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Children’s Album this year.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 11:00 AM AMERNET STRING QUARTET & FRIENDS Alexander Platt, narrator. Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf 25

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SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 11 AM ERICA PICKHARDT & FRIENDS Erica and her friends return with a follow-up to last season’s wonderfully successful visit.

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Saturdays 11AM. Admission is free for all young people under 16. These wonderful concerts, long a Maverick tradition, are designed for enjoyment by school-age children. Accompanying adults pay only $5

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Free Young People’s Concerts

Maverick Concerts is made possible in part with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Maverick Concerts is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Arnold Blanch, Portrait of Hervey White, oil on canvas, circa 1930, 21� X 26�

Courtesy Woodstock Historical Society

Music in the Woods Since 1916

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.

Email: maverickmuse@aol.com Maverick Concerts Mailing Address: P.O. Box 9 Street Address: 120 Maverick Road Woodstock, N.Y. 12498