World 12_05_18

The Vermont Fiddle Orchestra Celebrates 15th Anniversary With Two Concerts
By Ellen B. Marshall
Vermont Fiddle Orchestra will mark its 15th anniversary
with concerts featuring guest musician and founding music
director, Sarah Hotchkiss, and composer/accompanist John
Mowad, Woodbury Strings Studio musicians with over 70
years combined teaching experience.
This season’s concert features both traditional music of
Irish, Breton, southern, and north Atlantic origins, along with
a fine taste of original tunes.
“Veefer Swing” by John Mowad, an expert jazz, blues,
rock, and country guitar musician, was written to commemorate
the orchestra’s 10th anniversary, and “Jane Nesbitt’s
Hornpipe” also by Mowad, was composed in honor of a
beloved VFO founding member who passed away this summer.
Music Director, David Kaynor, will lead the violins, violas,
cello, bass, banjo, guitars, flutes, and mandolin in playing his
recent composition “Stamey Creek,” which explores the harmonics
of the A scale. Inspired by David’s memory of collecting
stones for jewelry in the North Carolina creek, the
Pressley sisters are brilliant young musician/composers David
met at the John C. Campbell Folk School. Also inspired by the
same musical family, Kaynor’s tunes “Pressley Manor” and
“Matt’s Jig” will be featured.
This year the Vermont Fiddle Orchestra nominated Kaynor
for the Country Dance and Song Society’s Lifetime
Achievement Award. Kaynor has led the VFO for the past five
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years. They noted his 50-year contribution to teaching, performing,
calling for dances, leading jams, and mentoring in
the best sense— sharing his fiddle and leadership talent in a
way that invites an audience into a fun, joyful experience
with traditional music.
Sarah Hotchkiss praises Kaynor, who has led the VFO for
the past five years. “He is just the sort of music director I had
in mind when I started the orchestra.” Her own gentle and
patient ability to bring out the musicianship in people with no
prior experience is well-matched by Kaynor’s participative,
no-harm-in-trying invitation to jump into a tune wherever it
feels comfortable.
This unique, regionally diverse and multi-talented community
group of enthusiasts numbering around 50, welcomes
all, without auditions, be it a beginning beginner, someone
pulling a long-neglected instrument from the closet, or the
seasoned professional. VFO members learn by ear and by
reading sheet music, acquiring a vast repertoire of tunes.
Strangers soon become friends through carpooling to rehearsals,
sub-group potluck/practices in members’ homes, and the
busy summer schedule of paid and benefit events.
The VFO is a non-profit, using funds raised from members’
tuition and concert fundraisers to provide stipends for
the director and manager, and to pay for rehearsal and concert
spaces.
This year, the VFO will raffle gift baskets full of membercrafted
and donated items— especially nice to enjoy on a
• • •
winter evening: fine chocolate, Chittenden Chutneys, knitted
hats & mittens, honey, maple syrup, Grian Herb and Tea Shop
gift certificate, candles, maple sugar, greeting cards, Fat Toad
Farm Caramel, wine & sparkling cider, Elmore Mountain
Farm soaps, homemade pickles, Cabot cheeses, original miniature
paintings, Lightfoot Farm black currant syrup and hibiscus
tea, breads, cookies, certificates for Eben Bodach-Turner
and Vermont Violins bow re-hairs— and more.
Raffle tickets are $5 each or 3/$10, available from VFO
members or at the Saturday concert. David Kaynor, Sarah
Hotchkiss, John Mowad, and all orchestra members invite you
to bring your neighbors and families to experience one of
these December concerts. They promise to be a warm, memorable
way to start the winter season.
The Saturday 12/8 concert is admission by donation, made
possible by generous grants from Vermont Mutual Insurance
Group and Northfield Savings Bank. The orchestra thanks
both for their commitments to strengthen communities
through fostering youth, families, and education, as they
support healthy lives that demonstrate genuine caring for
people. The Sunday, 12/9 concert benefits the Randolph
Senior Center. Tickets are $10, children under 12 by donation.
For more information, or gift basket raffle tickets,
please contact VFO manager Joanne Puente at 802/229-4191
or pansygirl113@aol.com.
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MAGIC MAZE
Answers to this week’s
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1. True
2. Las Vegas (Outer Banks
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3. Fisher Island, off the coast
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SUPER CROSSWORD
page 8 The WORLD December 5, 2018
One Step Montpelier Community Gospel Choir Dec. 8 and Dec. 9
Joined by guest artist Lloyd Dugger, the Montpelier
Community Gospel Choir (MCGC) will perform a pair of
concerts on December 8 in Barre and December 9 in
Montpelier.
The choir will be collecting mittens and gloves at each
concert for Good Samaritan Haven, which runs a winter shelter
at the Bethany Church in Montpelier in addition to shelters
in Barre.
L. Brown & Sons and Tall Paul’s Tall Mall (Hartmann’s
Montpelier business) join in sponsoring the December concerts.
The choir is also supported by the Vermont Community
Foundation, the Montpelier Community Fund, the New York
Community Trust and Montpelier Alive, as well as a generous
donation from the Donahue Charitable Trust Foundation, in
memory of Eileen M. Donahue.
Special guest artist Lloyd Dugger is well known to central
Vermonters, having lived in Montpelier for many years while
leading bands at Montpelier High School and U-32, and maintaining
a busy concert schedule. Dugger and his family relocated
to Massachusetts in 2016.
Formed in 1994, MCGC is dedicated to singing gospel
music in the African-American tradition, as well as music
inspired by the tradition. While firmly rooted in gospel music,
MCGC is a secular choir with members from all over central
and northern Vermont, according to Harrison. The choir is
accompanied by a full band comprised of local professional
musicians.
“We strive to celebrate and honor gospel’s rich native choral
heritage, and its power to move people spiritually and to
create a profound sense of community. We honor the many
thousands of singers who brought this music to us through
unspeakable hardship and faith,” said Harrison.
The December 8 concert will be held at 7 p.m. at Barre’s
First Presbyterian Church, and the December 9 concert will be
held at 4 p.m. at Bethany United Church of Christ in
Montpelier. Admission to both concerts is by suggested donation
of $10 per person or $25 for families. For more information,
call (802) 778-0881 or visit facebook.com/vtgospel or
vtgospel.com.
Americana Band Donna the Buffalo Brings High-Energy to Chandler, Dec. 15
With roots deep in old-time fiddle music and the string
band sounds of Appalachia, the Celtic realm, French Canada,
and Louisiana, Donna the Buffalo has woven together a soulful
mix of rock, folk, reggae, country, Cajun, and zydeco
sounds into its own singular musical stew for nearly 30 years.
The longtime upstate New York band, based in the Ithaca
area, visits the Chandler Center for the Arts for an evening of
grooving, high-energy American roots music on Saturday,
December 15 at 7:30 pm. Rising-star roots-rock outfit The
Gary Douglas Band will open the show.
Mainstays on the folk, bluegrass, and rock festival circuits,
as well as on club and concert stages nationwide, Donna the
Buffalo is beloved by a devoted fan base known collectively
as “The Herd.” Touring continuously since 1989, Donna the
Buffalo is considered one of the most dynamic, eclectic bands
in the country, drawing rave reviews from critics and fans
alike wherever the group travels.
Donna the Buffalo drew its original inspiration from a
cherished part of the American heritage: the old-time music
festivals of the south, which drew entire towns and counties.
“Those festivals were so explosive, with the feeling of community
and the feeling of people just being with each other,”
says Puryear. “That’s the feeling we’re shooting for in our
music. Donna the Buffalo is an extension of the joy we’ve
found in playing at those kinds of festivals.”
Expect a joyous evening of sonic wizardry and wildly
diverse, rootsy sounds from Donna the Buffalo at Chandler
Music Hall on Saturday, December 15 at 7:30 pm. For tickets
and more information, call the Chandler Box Office at (802)
728-6464, visit chandler-arts.org, or stop by Chandler weekdays
between 12 and 4 pm.
The Borromeo String Quartet Perform at Chandler, Dec. 9
The Borromeo String Quartet has recently been celebrating
its 25 anniversary. Each visionary performance of this awardwinning
ensemble strengthens its reputation as one of the
most important ones of our time.
Presenters at Chandler Center for the Arts are delighted to
host this internationally acclaimed group on the Chandler
main stage for a matinée on Sunday, December 9 at 3:00. On
the program will be the Haydn String Quartet Opus 71/1, the
late Beethoven String Quartet Opus 27, and the 2nd String
Quartet of contemporary Hungarian/Austrian composer,
György Ligeti. The audience is invited to a complimentary
post-performance reception to meet the artists.
Admired and sought after for both its fresh interpretations
of the classical music canon and its championing of works by
20th and 21st century composers, the Borromeo String
Quartet has been hailed for its “edge-of-the-seat performances”
by the Boston Globe, which called it “simply the best.”
“Nothing less than masterful” (Cleveland.com), the
Borromeo Quartet has received numerous awards throughout
its illustrious career, including Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher
Career Grant and Martin E. Segal Award, and Chamber Music
America’s Cleveland Quartet Award. It was also a recipient of
the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and top
prizes at the International String Quartet Competition in
Evian, France.
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With an expansive repertoire ranging from its Bartok to
Gunther Schuller, its signature cycle of Beethoven’s string
quartets, and collaborations with some of this generation’s
most important composers - John Gage, György Ligeti,
Jennifer Higdon, John Harbison - the Quartet performs on
such major concert stages as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center,
Kennedy Center, The Concergebouw, Wigmore Hall,
Tuscany’s Terra di Siena Chamber Music Festival, and at
venues in Switzerland, Japan, Korea, and China.
Recent engagements include the Library of Congress,
Peabody Institute, San Francisco Conservatory, Trinity
Church Wall Street, Chamber Music Society of Forth Worth,
and the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival,
among many others.
The Borromeo String Quartet is Quartet-in-Residence at
the New England Conservatory and the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston, and at the Taos School of Music
summer program in Taos, New Mexico.
Tickets are available online at chandler-arts.org, or by calling
the box office at (802) 728-6464 weekdays from noon
until 4 p.m.
This concert is presented by Chandler Center for the Arts in
Randolph and is made possible in part by the Max Seaton
Charitable Trust. Chandler Music Hall is fully accessible and
equipped for the hearing impaired.