Dine Huntington Restaurant Week • OCTOBER 13-20, 2013
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HALF HOLLOW HILLS Copyright © 2013 Long Islander Newspapers, LLC
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N E W S P A P E R
VOLUME FIFTEEN, ISSUE 35
The Paramount Spotlight
DIX HILLS
Stars Shine For Coltrane Home psloggatt@longislandernews.com
TheReturn Of‘TheKing’ By Peter Sloggatt psloggatt@longislandernews.com
Are you ready for “The King?” BB King, the reigning patriarch of the blues and a man considered be many to be among the greatest guitarists playing today, is coming to The Paramount. King, who came in at no. 6 on the 2011 edition of Rolling Stone magazine’s all time top-100 guitarists list, is returning to The Paramount for a second time, having played the Huntington concert venue in 2011. He’ll perform with a full band at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19. King’s first appearance at The Paramount came shortly after it first opened. He was perhaps the first living (Continued on page A6)
The stars came out for the first big fundraiser to benefit the John Coltrane Home in Dix Hills this past Sunday, led by guitar legend Carlos Santana. Santana, a veteran of Woodstock and arguably one of the most influential guitarists of the century, drew a sizable crowd of Coltrane Home supporters to EN Japanese Brasserie on Hudson Street in New York City. Among them were Elvis Costello, jazz drummer Roy Haynes, Jimmy Heath and Ravi Coltrane, whose quartet performed. Santana, who serves as honorary chairman of the Coltrane Home board of directors, feels a deep affinity for Coltrane’s music, which he said can be felt “at the molecular level.” He feels the same way about the jazz composer’s life, which was a spiritual pursuit of pureness and beauty. He sees the mission of the Coltrane Home as a means of social change. “The brothers, brown and black, have a
lack of self worth. This is why they behave the way they behave,” he said. “The more you invite the youngsters, the rappers, to connect with John Coltrane… this will stop the carnage and the shooting. They will carry themselves differently and behave differently.” The message resonated in the crowd of 150 supporters who have thrown themselves behind efforts to preserve the home on Candlewood Path in Dix Hills where in 1963 Coltrane locked himself in a second-story room for six days and wrote his opus, “A Love Supreme.” The culmination of the saxophonist/composer’s career, “A Love Supreme” reached new levels and remains in the eyes of many among the greatest music ever written. “If you want to know John Coltrane, you have to know ‘A Love Supreme,’” said Coltrane biographer Ashley Kahn, who also spoke at the event. Efforts to preserve Coltrane’s home on Candlewood Path and build an education (Continued on page A6)
Half Hollow Hills photo/ Peter Sloggatt
By Peter Sloggatt
BB King plays The Paramount, Saturday, Oct. 19.
20 PAGES
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013
Carlos Santana told supporters of the Coltrane Home in Dix Hills that the composer’s music can bring about social change.
DIX HILLS
A Central School District Divided By Jacqueline Birzon jbirzon@longislandernews.com
Although there was no special red tape marking which side of the auditorium Chestnut Hill and Signal Hill parents should sit, there might as well have been. A divided audience filled more than 200 seats in the Candlewood Middle School auditorium to rally Half Hollow Hills’ Board of Education members to keep their children’s elementary school open, following an announcement that the district will close at least two elementary schools in the 2014-2015 school year. At Monday’s public forum,
residents came out with prepared speeches and talking points for the board’s consideration following the Sept. 26 unveiling of findings from the Facilities Steering Committee, a special task force formed to investigate impacts of declining enrollment. The 28-member committee, comprised of parents and residential stakeholders, told board members and Superintendent Kelly Fallon that it would be in the district’s best interest to close either Signal Hill or Chestnut Hill, and either Vanderbilt or Forest Park elementary schools, in (Continued on page A6)
Brandon Weiss, the parent of two boys attending Chestnut Hill Elementary School, rallied that the largest, most central of the district’s seven elementary schools stay open next year at Monday’s school board meeting.
IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION
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