A wonderful evening

I say yes and yes again, to Jim Lowe’s enthusiastic review of the Scrag Mountain Music performance in Montpelier.

Old man though I am and stiff with tradition, I was left marvelling at the difficult and little-heard music by the two ultra-modernist composers, Steve Reich and George Crumb, that Scrag Mountain brought to us. And old man that I am and somewhat tired in my feelings, I marvelled also at the almost dancing joy that first one and then another and another of the very young musicians found in their work ... the joy of being surprised themselves by the music they were making together, and of being liberated enough to show it on their faces and in their movements. The lucky kids.

The price of admission brought to me not just an evening of astonishing music, but of theater, too, in the performance of the soprano Mary Bonhag -- watch her face, watch her mouth, as she articulates the strangest of beautiful sounds, as she sings and wrenches out the words of the martyred poet, Lorca. And watch her careful stillnesses, between the stanzas.

The concert brought me an evening of near-ballet as well, in the spontaneous small dances-in-place that the blooming of the music drew out of the percussionist, Greg Beyer, particularly, who wasn’t called on by any script to small-dance in place, but couldn’t help doing that, and doing it beautifully, for sheer joy at the music he and his comrades were stitching together. To see that beatific grin-and-dance of Beyer while the music spun along and he with it, was to witness exaltation in performance.

I want to thank Montpelier’s Unitarian Church, our own Carnegie Hall, for once more, for the umpteenth time, opening its doors to the neighborhood to reach, through our ears, for a little exaltation of our own.

Jules Rabin

Marshfield