Arts Preview
The coming week in arts and entertainment
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Published: November 27, 2009
Who’s Bob Dylan?
MONTPELIER – Montpelier’s first Bob Dylan Wannabe Contest was held one sweltering summer evening in 2004 in a vacant Montpelier storefront. There, a packed audience – mostly standing room only – watched with amusement and bewilderment as a dozen Dylan wannabes took to the makeshift stage. That inaugural contest included a ukulele-strumming Bob and another Bob accompanied onstage by an underwear-clad Victoria’s Secret model. This Saturday 7 to 10 p.m., at City Hall is the fifth annual Great Green Mountain Bob Dylan Wannabe Contest. Thirty Zimmermen and Zimmerwomen have registered and will battle for the coveted King of the Bobs” title, the most Dylans ever assembled. There are even two sets of fathers and sons are competing in this quirky event. What better way to spend the Saturday after Thanksgiving than to listen to the hopeful and hopeless caterwaul their way through the back pages of the Dylan catalogue. Your out-of-town relatives and guests will never be the same.
Advance tickets – and organizers suggest you get yours in advance if you want a seat – are available at Bear Pond Books or Riverwalk Records in Montpelier and LACE or Exile on Main Street in Barre. Tickets will also be available at the door. Proceeds from this year’s event will benefit Goddard radio station WGDR and Home Share of Central Vermont. For more information, e-mail: BobDylanWannabe09@patricktimothymullikin.com
VAC feeds hunger
MONTPELIER — We’ve all heard the saying “art feeds the soul”, but people need to feed their bodies first. In response to the dire economics Vermonters are facing this again winter, the Vermont Arts Council has organized its second doing our pART online art auction to benefit the Vermont Foodbank. Bidding on more than 100 arts related items will take place Nov. 27- Dec. 4 at www.vermontartscouncil.org. Last fall, 80 artists and arts organizations stepped to the plate by donating goods and services to the first event. When the bidding closed, $10,254 in art had been sold and the Vermont Foodbank received 100 percent of the proceeds. The contribution equaled 15 tons of food, or approximately 27,000 meals for hungry Vermonters. The retail value of items range from $100 to $1,500 but bidding on all items will begin at just $100. This year’s auction includes 73 pieces of original art including work by artists Warren Kimble, Susan Wahlrab, and Margaret Lampe Kannenstine.
An auction preview is now available at www.vermontartscouncil.org. Bidding will begin today and end at 5 PM on Friday, Dec. 4.
‘Holiday Hangover’
WAITSFIELD – Looking for a way to work off that outrageous Thanksgiving feast? Try laughter and song… Join Cafe Noir Productions on the day after Thanksgiving as they welcome in the holiday season with the “Holiday Hangover Cabaret and Buffet” at the Valley Players Theater. The show will feature local actors and singers performing some of your favorite holiday songs, readings, and skits. Those attending the show are invited to help create the buffet by bringing in their Thanksgiving leftovers to share with the rest of the audience. Table seating will be available and is first come-first served. There will also be a karaoke contest, for which they will be recruiting three audience members to participate. The contest will be judged by some very special guests. Performers include Jacob Minter, Olivia Bartlet, Rachel Bruce, Rachel Sanguinetti, Mary Fair and Clio Briggs, Scott Weigand, Rick Rayfield and Andrea Bonamico. The show willl be at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $10. Anyone who brings a nonperishable food item for donation will be given an additional discount on their ticket price. Call (802) 496-4781 for tickets and to guarantee your table seats today.
Cherish the Ladies
WOODSTOCK – Pentangle Arts Council celebrates the season with Cherish the Ladies Celtic Christmas in concert at Town Hall Theatre on Saturday, Dec. 5, at 7:30 p.m. They have grown from a one-time concert concept to an Irish traditional music sensation, literally the most successful and sought-after Irish-American group in Celtic music. Organized by folklorist/musician Mick Moloney and sponsored by the Ethnic Folk Arts Center and the National Endowment for the Arts, they began as a concert series featuring the brightest lights in Irish traditional music.
Tickets are $35 and $28, and may be reserved by contacting the Pentangle Arts Council Box Office at 802-457-3981 or online at www.pentanglearts.org.
Vermont fiddles
MONTPELIER – The Vermont Fiddle Orchestra will be performing its annual holiday concert on Saturday, Dec. 5, at 7 p.m. at the City Hall Arts Center. Guest soloists are Cajun music performers Andy T. Stewart on fiddle and Mary Jo Slattery on guitar and vocals. Andy and Mary Jo will be performing traditional Cajun tunes as a duet and with the orchestra. The orchestra will also perform Quebecois, Irish, Scottish, British, Danish, Appalachian and New England tunes as well as a selection of tunes by Vermont composers.
Tickets are $15, $12 for seniors and students (12 and younger free); call 1-877-343-3531, or go online to www.vtfiddleorchestra.org.
Soulive singer Toussaint Liberator
BURLINGTON – For the better part of a decade, vocalist Toussaint Liberator has lent his husky, powerful tenor to countless groups: the hip-hop outfit Red Pill, his own China Band, and most notably for two years to Stax and Blue Note recording artists Soulive. After touring the world — literally — with Soulive, Toussaint has returned to the Northeast to perform his own original soul and reggae music with his new backing band Buru Style. He will appear in Vermont on Friday Dec. 4, at 10 p.m., at Nectar’s, 188 Main St. Toussaint will perform with Buru Style, an eight-piece band that has backed countless soul and reggae singers and released their own instrumental albums. Save for a few choice covers and mash-ups, Toussaint and Buru Style perform entirely original music written collectively. Together, Toussaint and Buru Style deliver a tight, energetic, quickly paced, fun-to-behold show.
Cover is $5 (21+); call (802) 658-4771.
‘Christmas Carol’ awry
ESSEX CENTER – Essex Community Players will again present an original Christmas show, this year, “‘Neezer: A Dickens of a Comical Re-Telling of ‘A Christmas Carol.’” The production is written and directed by Brett Thompson. Somewhere in the deep south, tucked away on Walnut’s Mountain in the town of Walnutville is the home of the Committee of Repertory Unconventional Drama — C.R.U.D. Led by the founders, the Walnut sisters, and all their kith and kin, this small community theater is preparing for opening night of their holiday production of “‘Neezer” – (very) loosely based on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Tickets have been sold, the audience is arriving, but there is just one problem — nothing is ready! Sets aren’t fully built, costumes aren’t sewn, cast members don’t know their lines, the lead actor is unable to perform, and no one else knows the part!
Performance dates are Thursday-Saturday, Dec. 3-5 and 10- 12, at 7 p.m., and Sundays, Dec. 6 and 13, at 2 p.m. at Memorial Hall (at the intersection of Routes 15 & 128 and Towers Road). Tickets are $10, $5 for children (12 & under): call (802) 878-9109.
Honoring Handel
HANOVER, N.H. – Daniel Pinkham’s beloved Christmas Cantata and the world premiere of a newly commissioned piece are features of a concert of holiday music by the Handel Society of Dartmouth College on Tuesday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., in the Hop’s Spaulding Auditorium. In commemoration of the Handel anniversary year, the Handel Society will premiere “Divine Cecilia,” by American composer Daniel Brewbaker (b. 1951). Brewbaker’s works have been performed by some of the world’s leading singers and musicians in the foremost musical centers of the world. This anthem for unaccompanied chorus sets stanzas from Alexander Pope’s “Ode to St. Cecilia,” which praises the patron saint of music and musicians. Brewbaker, who composed this work during the summer and early fall of 2009, holds the distinction of being the first American commissioned to compose a work for the legendary Kirov Orchestra and Chorus in St. Petersburg, Russia. His composition “The Poet” received its premiere at the White Nights Festival in June of 1999, conducted by Valery Gergiev. The 100-member oratorio society, led by conductor Robert Duff, will also preview works its 43-member touring ensemble will perform in a series of 10 concerts Dec. 9-18 in England, France and Germany.
Tickets are $20; call (603) 646-2422, or www.hop.dartmouth.edu.
Local writers celebrated
THETFORD HILL – On Saturday, Dec. 5, at 7:30 p.m., at the Eclipse Grange Theater, The Parish Players will co-host an evening of contemporary fiction written by local authors of natural stature – Paley, Tudish and Griesemer – and read aloud by Upper Valley actors. This event will include a reception for PEN New England/North, the regional chapter of in the international writers’ support organization, PEN. Revered story writer and poet Grace Paley, who was also an influential antiwar activist, lived in Thetford and New York City until her death in 2007. Her book “The Collected Stories” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Paley’s story will be read by actress Kim Meredith. Catherine Tudish is the author of an acclaimed collection of stories “Tenney’s Landing” (Scribner, 2005) and a novel, “American Cream” (Scribner, 2007). She lives in Strafford, and teaches at Dartmouth College. Tudish’s featured story will be read by Suzanne Dudley Schon. Author and professional actor John Griesemer is the author of the novels “No One Thinks of Greenland” (Picador, 2002) and “Signal & Noise” (Picador, 2003). He has performed widely on stage, having had his start in theater in the Eclipse Grange in 1975 in the Parish Players’ production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” and eventually working in shows on Broadway (“Inherit the Wind” with George C. Scott, and “Our Town”with Spalding Gray); Off-Broadway (world premiere of “A Lie of the Mind” directed by Sam Shepard); Lincoln Center, and the New York Shakespeare Festival. He lives in Lyme, N.H. Griesemer’s story will be read by Griesmer himself.
Admission is $12. A reception for people interested in PEN New England/North will begin at 5:30 p.m., and a $15 ticket will include both the reception and the reading program. More information, including directions, go online to www.parishplayers.org.
Vermont Public Television
-Sunday: At 3:30 p.m., “Sinatra at Carnegie Hall” presents highlights of Frank Sinatra’s 1980 engagement, with hits like “New York, New York” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” At 5 p.m., Guido Dieteren leads his Dutch classical/rock crossover orchestra in a spectacular concert called “Guido’s Orchestra: Live From the Heart of Europe.” Guest artists and the Drielandenpunt Children’s Choir join him. At 7 p.m., “Ed Sullivan’s Rock and Roll Classics — The ‘60s” presents some of the amazing acts Sullivan introduced to North America on his TV show from 1963 to ‘68 — from The Beatles to the Rolling Stones to The Doors. At 9 p.m., “Great Performances” presents “Andrea Bocelli & David Foster: My Christmas,” where Foster’s lush arrangements mesh with tenor Bocelli’s soaring vocals in a concert of holiday classics. Among the special guests are Natalie Cole, the Muppets and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
- Monday: At 7:30 p.m. on “Profile,” Fran Stoddard talks with Jan Reynolds of Stowe, a renowned adventurer, author and photographer who has skied around Mt. Everest and crossed the Sahara on camel for National Geographic. At 8 p.m., “Doo Wop 50” gathers stars to celebrate 50 years since the rise of the harmonizing vocal groups of the late 1950s. From the Platters’ “Great Pretender” to Gene Chandler’s “Duke of Earl,” the fast-paced special includes such magic moments as the reunion of the Chantels and host Jerry Butler’s performance of his first hit recording.
-Tuesday: At 8 p.m., “Tim Janis: Celebrate America” features the composer and musician performing at Vermont Public Television with choirs from several area high schools. Accompanied by the Montpelier Youth Orchestra, the singers perform uplifting compositions that celebrate the American spirit. Schools in the program are Essex, Mt. Mansfield Union, Vergennes, Hanover, U-32, Montpelier, Northfield, North Country Union, Middlebury, BFA St. Albans, Missisquoi Valley, The Putney School and Champlain Valley Union.
-Wednesday: At 7:30 p.m., “Andre Rieu Live in Dresden: Wedding at the Opera” is a concert overflowing with song and dance, as well as “The Wedding March” performed for real newlyweds. It took place in 2008 at the city’s beautiful Semper Opera House. At 9:30 p.m., a favorite folk special returns to VPT. “Peter, Paul and Mary: Carry It On: A Musical Legacy” features classic performances and interviews with the legendary trio.
-Thursday: At 7:30 p.m., “Great Performances” encores “Andrea Bocelli & David Foster: My Christmas,” where Foster’s lush arrangements mesh with Bocelli’s soaring vocals in a concert of holiday classics. Among the special guests are Natalie Cole, the Muppets and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. At 9:30 p.m., “Ed Sullivan’s Rock and Roll Classics — The ‘60s” presents some of the amazing acts Sullivan introduced to North America on his TV show.
-Friday, Dec. 4: At 10 p.m., “Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Live” compiles one-of-a-kind performances from induction ceremonies over the last 24 years.
-Saturday, Dec. 5: At 5:30 p.m., “Celtic Woman: Songs From the Heart” premieres. Ireland’s Powerscourt House and Gardens provides the breathtaking backdrop for a program that includes spirited fiddle and bodhran pieces, lush arrangements of Irish classics, contemporary covers and original compositions. The Aontas Choir, the Discovery Gospel Choir, the Extreme Rhythm Drummers and a bagpipe ensemble join Celtic Woman for this event. From 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., three back-to-back episodes of “As Time Goes By” follow Jean and Lionel to America, as their love story is being made into a mini-series. Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer star. At 9:30 p.m., “Doo Wop 50” gathers stars to celebrate 50 years of the harmonic vocal groups that started in the late 1950s. From the Platters’ “Great Pretender” to Gene Chandler’s “Duke of Earl,” the fast-paced special includes such magic moments as the reunion of the Chantels’ after 40 years and host Jerry Butler’s performance of his first hit recording.
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