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\nOn the evening of August 29, 1952, in the woods just outside Woodstock, the up-and-coming pianist David Tudor sat down at the piano onstage at the Maverick Concert Hall, lifted his hands over the keys, looked at the score, and paused. And paused. And paused. Tudor was premiering the artist and composer John Cage\u2019s new work, 4\u201933.\u201d For each movement, he read the score, and then closed and reopened the piano lid\u2014without ever touching the keys. Although 4\u201933\u201d has become famous as \u201cthe silent piece,\u201d it was anything but. Cage later explained that he created the piece to demonstrate that \u201csilence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around.\u201d He wanted his audience not to expect to hear piano notes, but instead to realize that there is no such thing as silence, that sounds\u2014and therefore musical notes\u2014are always around us and even within us, and we actually choose what we hear.<\/p>\n\n
The premiere of 4\u201933\u201d changed the world of music forever. And it is fitting that such a revolutionary moment occurred at the Maverick. Being open to the woods, the concert hall is constantly filled with the sounds of nature.<\/p>\n
The Maverick first opened its barn-like doors in 1916, as part of the then-burgeoning Maverick Colony for collaborative artists and craftspeople. To build the distinctively rustic venue, the Maverick\u2019s founder, Hervey White, who was also a novelist, poet, printer, editor, and socialist, enlisted a crew of like-minded artists, builders, and friends. The building, framed with heavy timber to which the walls were nailed directly, and topped with a gambrel roof of asphalt and wood shingles, is renowned for its remarkable acoustics. \u201cI did it with the idea of gathering some good musicians during the summer months and giving chamber music in a rustic music chapel among tall trees at the foot of a hill,\u201d White told the New York Times in 1916. The Maverick has always straddled two worlds\u2014as an innovative and revolutionary force and as a keeper of chamber music traditions\u2014and gained distinction within both spheres. Besides hosting the premiere of 4\u201933\u201d, the Maverick has welcomed international stars like\u00a0the Tokyo String Quartet, and is America\u2019s oldest continuous summer chamber music series venue.<\/p>\n In recent decades, the Maverick has worked to create a more inclusive music program. Music director Alexander Platt, who arrived in 2002, broadened the chamber and classical programming; reestablished the Young People\u2019s Concerts program (first offered in the early 1990s); and founded an annual chamber music concert, which he directs, as well as the series Jazz at the Maverick.<\/p>\n Last summer, to complement Platt\u2019s programing and push for more diversity in its performers and audience, the Maverick hired its first executive director. Kitt Potter, a jazz singer as well as the former development associate for the Colour of Music Festival<\/a>, which celebrates black classical musicians, is now working to contemporize the Maverick\u2019s programing while paying homage to its roots as a cultural innovator.<\/p>\n Initially Potter perceived Colour of Music\u2019s concept as \u201cmilitant,\u201d but found that as the festival evolved, so did its audience. \u201cIf you put more colors on the stage, you will get more colors in the audience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n With the Maverick\u2019s allies and audience predominantly aging and white, it\u2019s time to attract younger people of varied backgrounds\u2014as board members, volunteers, audience members, and performers\u2014\u201cso we can hand the baton down,\u201d says Potter. \u201cWith my jazz backing and contacts, and with Alexander\u2019s in the classical world, as well as my specialty in youth program development, we are doing great things together. When we put our heads together, we are a force to be reckoned with.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing up in the 1970s in Newburgh, Potter attended private schools there. Despite the bad rap Newburgh often gets, she calls the city \u201can amazingly great town that raises incredible citizens.\u201d Her music career started early. As a baby, she sat beneath the piano bench as her grandfather played the piano. By age four, she was scatting to Ella Fitzgerald and mimicking Miles Davis; at eight, she started classical voice training. Initially, she hated it. \u201cI thought I was being punished,\u201d she says. \u201cI wanted to do rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, but my mom and my brother [who played drums] taught me the whole Jazz Fake Book.\u201d<\/p>\n Potter sang in her church and school choirs. At SUNY Oswego<\/a>, which she attended before transferring to Howard University<\/a>, she debuted as a lead singer. \u201cMy parents drove there to hear me and my father was in tears,\u201d she recalls. \u201cBy the time I got to Howard, I was knee deep in funk music.\u201d<\/p>\n At Howard, where Potter studied sociology, she met Noble Jolley, Sr., the school\u2019s first graduate jazz music major. \u201cHe brought the jazz out of me,\u201d she recalls, by inviting her onstage at Washington, DC\u2019s Cellar Door. \u201cI had written original lyrics to Herbie Hancock\u2019s \u2018Maiden Voyage\u2019,\u201d she says. \u201cI sang my lyrics and walked offstage, singing, to thunderous applause.\u201d<\/p>\n After 10 years in DC, doing gigs at night and working at think tanks by day\u2014including the Urban Institute<\/a>, National Academy of Sciences, and Committee on the Status of Black Americans\u2014Potter returned to the Hudson Valley to work as an employment trainer and grants coordinator. Eventually, she became first soprano at the Charleston Symphony Spiritual Ensemble<\/a>, where she was tapped six years ago for the Colour of Music Festival by its founder and artistic director, Lee Pringle. \u201cWhen I saw Colour of Music featured on CBS-TV, I knew it had arrived,\u201d she says. \u201cAfrican Americans tend to enjoy jazz, blues, hip-hop, and funk, but when they saw posters with people that looked like them [playing classical music], they wanted to support the festival.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Potter has served several institutions, none of them were quite like the Maverick. \u201cI\u2019m an old soul, and I like old houses,\u201d she says. \u201cI visited the Maverick years ago and was mesmerized. Serving an institution that has lasted the test of time is different from working for a new organization, where people need to hear success stories and want to know the \u2018why.\u2019 The Maverick presents music at an historical site. The setting, architecture, history, and story are so fascinating. I\u2019m living my dream.\u201d<\/p>\n In the 2018 season, Potter will perform at the Maverick. \u201cWhen Alexander asked me [to perform], he said, \u2018You\u2019re not allowed to say no and you have to sing \u201cAlfie\u201d for me,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cHe made me cry.\u201d Platt also requested that she perform songs from No Strings, a 1962 Tony-nominated musical drama, starring Diahann Carroll as a fashion model living in Paris, which explored the Civil Rights Movement as well as interracial relationships.<\/p>\n For her performance, \u201cBright Moments In and Out of Time,\u201d Potter plans to offer her take on the plight of blacks and gays, as well as terrorism by featuring the music of Nina Simone, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Miles Davis. \u201cBut the crux of it will focus on the migration to Paris and those who came back to America, like James Baldwin,\u201d she says. \u201cHe experienced the hosings, the dog attacks, and Bloody Sunday, and then returned to America to fight as an intellectual. I may include some \u2018jazz-oetry.\u2019\u201d Potter will be joined by local musicians: saxophonist Joe Giardullo, bassist Steve Rust, keyboardist Vinnie Martucci, and drummer Arti Dixon, the latter three of whom are also included on her CD, to be released in December. \u201cThese musicians and I go back decades, and they\u2019re like my family playing with me,\u201d says Potter. \u201cThey know what my soul wants to sing before my brain gets it.\u201d<\/p>\n Summer Highlights at the Maverick<\/strong><\/p>\n New Foundations series presents three string quartet pieces by composer Aaron Jay Kernis, performed by Chiara String Quartet on July 9, Parker Quartet on July 16, and Jasper Quartet on July 23, and the world premiere of Gerard McBurney\u2019s String Quartet No. 1, \u201cHildegard Quartet\u201d (1996), inspired by the works of Hildegard von Bingen, performed by Spektral Quartet on July 8.<\/p>\n The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild hosts the Harlem Quartet\u2019s Young People\u2019s Concert at the Kleinert-James Center for the Arts in Woodstock on August 12. The quartet performs Gabriela Lena Frank\u2019s \u201cMilagros,\u201d for string quartet (2010), inspired by the sounds of Peru, back at the concert hall on August 13.<\/p>\n Trio Solisti offers the New York premiere of Jennifer Higdon\u2019s Piano Trio No. 2 (2017) on August 27.<\/p>\n Sunday afternoon chamber music concerts feature Escher String Quartet on July 2, Dover Quartet on August 6, Amernet String Quartet with pianist\u00a0Ran Dank on August 20, Trio Con Brio Copenhagen on July 30 and pianist\u00a0Orion Weiss\u00a0and Shanghai Quartet on September 10.<\/p>\n On August 26, Music Director Alexander Platt conducts the Maverick Chamber Players, members of the AUREA Ensemble, cellist Emmanuel Feldman, and soprano Maria Jette, in \u201cRemembrances\u201d featuring Maurice Ravel\u2019s\/Wolfgang Renz\u2019 Le Tombeau de Couperin and Modest Mussorgsky\u2019s\/Wolfgang Renz\u2019 Pictures at an Exhibition; Dominick Argento\u2019s \u201cSix Elizabethan Songs,\u201d and Ned Rorem\u2019s \u201cAfter Reading Shakespeare\u201d (1980).<\/p>\n The Young People\u2019s Concerts series (free for children under 16) and Maverick Prodigies concerts feature Arturo O\u2019Farrill Quintet on July 1, The Ladles on July 7, and Harlem Quartet at the Kleinert James Art Gallery on August 12.<\/p>\n Jazz at the Maverick presents Arturo O\u2019Farrill Quintet on July 1, Bill Charlap Trio on July 15, Eldar Djangirov Trio on July 29, and Karl Berger and the Creative Music Studio on September 2.<\/p>\n Bansuri flute master Steve Gorn returns on August 5 for Indian ragas with vocalist Sanjoy Banerjee and Samir Chatterjee on tabla. Nexus percussion ensemble, playing a mix of contemporary\u00a0classical, ragtime, African, and original music, performs on August 12. On September 9, Woodstock folk music legend Happy Traum performs with his friends.<\/p>\n Horszowski Trio\u00a0performs Daron Hagen\u2019s Piano Trio No. 2, \u201cJ\u2019entends\u201d (1986) on September 3 at the annual Concert for the Friends of Maverick. Admission is by contribution.<\/p>\n On the evening of August 29, 1952, in the woods just outside Woodstock, the up-and-coming pianist David Tudor sat down at the piano onstage at the Maverick Concert Hall, lifted his hands over the keys, looked at the score, and paused. And paused. And paused. Tudor was premiering the artist and composer John Cage\u2019s new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":63808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[764,1476,795,102],"tags":[2242,2244,1739,2237,2240,1615,2239,2241,2236,2235,2238,2243],"yoast_head":"\n
\nBoth the concert hall and art colony were named after a legendary wild horse that White heard about while visiting his sister in Colorado in the 1890s. In 1911, he published The Adventures of a Young Maverick<\/em>, a heroic narrative and ode to artistic freedom. In 1924, White commissioned sculptor John Flannagan to create a likeness of the horse as an icon for the arts colony. Using only an ax on the trunk of a chestnut tree, Flannagan sculpted a horse emerging from outstretched human hands. The 18-foot sculpture originally stood at the property\u2019s entrance, but since 1979, it has been housed inside the concert hall to avoid further deterioration.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upstater.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Simon-Russell.jpg\")
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