The Arts

Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Collaboration with The German Forum Presents Music Inspires Dance
Kaatsbaan International Dance Center presents Music Inspires Dance in collaboration with the German Forum, New York City with three outstanding young musicians: Julian Steckel, cellist; Anna-Theresa Steckel, violinist; and Hans Pieter Herman, baritone.

Babette Hierholzer, acclaimed pianist and Artistic Advisor to the German Forum, will accompany the performers. The concert will be on Friday, March 12, 2010 at 7:30 pm in the Studio Theatre.

Since performing for The German Forum four years ago, Julian Steckel has built a distinguished career in Europe. For this performance, he will be joined by his sister, an accomplished violinist. Rounding out this classical evening will be baritone Hans Pieter Herman, who sings regularly at the Amsterdam Opera. The program will include musical selections by Clara Schumann, Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Brahms, Korngold, Ligeti, Lehar and Saint-Saëns.

The German Forum, established 30 years ago, and under the current leadership of Henry Meyer-Oertel, President and Executive Director, has a unique and unifying mission to showcase gifted young talent from the German-speaking world and introduce them to the New York cultural community. In sponsoring their performances, the German Forum gives these young people a US debut and a helping hand in their studies and careers. Principal sponsors include Lufthansa Airlines, Deutsche Telekom, European-American Business Org. and RSM McGladrey Inc.

Pianist Babette Hierholzer has performed as a soloist with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra Kiel, Philharmonic Orchestra Ulm, Hamburg Symphonic Orchestra, the Krakow Philharmonic, the St. Louis Symphony, and the Winnepeg Symphony. She won first prize in the Steinway Piano Competition in Berlin, seven times; the All German National Piano Competition, twice; the prestigious Andy Petlansky Memorial Award in Palm Springs and the East & West Artist Prize for New York Debut among many others.

In 1986, Ms. Hierholzer gave her American debut with the Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra playing Liszt Concerto No. 1 and her Canadian debut with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven Concerto No. 2. Ms. Hierholzer made her first public appearance at the age of eleven in the Philharmonic Hall in Berlin, playing Mozart Concerto KV 488. She has performed extensively both in recital, chamber music and as soloist with orchestras in most of the countries of Europe, as well as in the United States, South America and Africa.

Kaatsbaan is a nonprofit, professional creative residence and performance facility situated on a 153-acre historic site in Tivoli, NY. Founded in 1990, it provides dance companies, choreographers, composers, set designers and all dance artists with a setting where they can create and showcase new work, rehearse, perform and develop new productions. It serves dance communities across the US and around the world.

Music Inspires Dance will take place on Friday, March 12 at 7:30 pm. Kaatsbaan International Dance Center is located at 120 Broadway, Tivoli, NY. For more information, call 845 757 5106 or visit www.kaatsbaan.org.

Ray Davies: Kinks Legend to Perform at Bardavon
The Bardavon presents Ray Davies on Sunday, March 7 at 7 pm at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie. This event is sponsored by Ulster Savings Bank. Davies will perform both solo and with a full band.

Ray Davies is an English rock musician best known as lead singer and songwriter (along with his younger brother, Dave) for The Kinks—one of the most prolific and long-lived British Invasion bands. Ray has acted, directed and produced shows for theater and television. Since the demise of The Kinks in the mid-90s, he has embarked on a solo career as a singer-songwriter.

The musically-inclined Davies was an art student at Hornsey College of Art in London in 1962/63, when The Kinks developed into a professional performing band. After The Kinks obtained a recording contract in early 1964, Davies emerged as the chief songwriter and de facto leader of the band, especially after the band’s breakthrough success with the song “You Really Got Me.” Davies led The Kinks through a period of musical experimentation between 1966 and 1976, with notable artistic achievements and commercial success. Between 1977 and their breakup in 1996, Davies and the group reverted to their earlier mainstream rock format and enjoyed a second peak of success. In 1990, Davies was inducted, with The Kinks, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, in 2005, into the UK Music Hall of Fame. Davies has performed solo since the mid 1990s.

Davies has had a tempestuous, “love-hate” relationship with younger brother and The Kinks guitarist Dave Davies that dominated The Kinks’ career as a band. Ray’s compositions and talent as a performer are universally hailed within the music industry, but he has maintained a career-long reputation for being fiercely independent and iconoclastic, resulting in a decades-long pattern of conflict and alienation within the industry. In 1973, a fed-up Davies attempted to announce the breakup of the band onstage (the microphone had been turned off though) and then attempted suicide by gobbling down handfuls of prescription drugs and washing them down with liquor. He was quoted in 1967 as saying, “If I had to do my life over, I would change every single thing I have done.”

In January 2004, Davies was shot in the leg while chasing thieves who had snatched his companion’s purse as they walked in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The shooting came less than a week after Davies was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. V2 Record released Ray’s first studio solo recording, Other Peoples Lives, in 2006, and his second solo album, Working Man’s Cafe, in 2007.

Tickets are $65 for Golden Circle; $50 Adults and $45 for Bardavon Members. Purchase your tickets at the Bardavon Box Office, 35 Market Street in Poughkeepsie, 845 473 2072 or at the UPAC Box Office, 601 Broadway in Kingston, 845 339 6088 or contact TicketMaster at 800 745 3000 or www.ticketmaster.com. For more information, go to: www.bardavon.org.

The Beauty of Discord at the Woodstock Artists Assocation & Museum
The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum kicks off the 2010 season in the Towbin Museum Wing with The Beauty of Discord: Selections from the Permanent Collection. The exhibition features a large selection from George Bellows’ War Series of 1918, as well as works by other Woodstock artists that push the boundaries of viewers’ comfort zones and portray such themes as war, injustice, depravity, hopelessness and angst. The exhibition has been organized in conjunction with the WAAM’s Museum Internship Program and was co-curated by intern William Tanksley and Executive Director Josephine Bloodgood.

Tanksley—a senior at Fordham University—writes in his introduction of the stark lithographs inspired by German atrocities committed in Belgium during WWI: “Bellows understands war is grizzly, atrocious, bestial, and inherently dehumanizing and attempts to put a face on the war being fought thousands of miles away. In an age without the mass-photography of today’s world, his works were a message, a silent communication between the artist and the viewer meant to place you right next to the victims, a witness to the injustice. ”

The series of fourteen prints by Bellows (seven lithographs will be displayed in the March exhibition) was donated to the WAAM Permanent Collection by donors Bill and Andrea Broyles in 2007. “WAAM and our community were very fortunate to have received this generous gift, which enhances our already strong collection of Bellows’ works on paper,” said Bloodgood, who has served as curator of WAAM’s landmark collection since 2003.

George Bellows (1882-1925) was one of the earliest members of the Woodstock Artists Association, submitting works to numerous gallery shows in first years of the 1920s. The WAAM’s Village Massacre (1918)—a large lithograph from this series that measures almost three feet wide—depicts a group of Belgian civilians—men, women, and children—some railing against their attackers, others submitting to their plight, and still others injured or dead, collapsed on the ground. Bellows’ tremendous confidence as a draughtsman is evident here in the rich range of lights and darks and bold marks which delineate figures, as well as the bleak landscape in which they find themselves.

Other works in the exhibition include paintings and works on paper by John McClellan, Karl Fortess, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Lucile Blanch, Pele deLappe, and others. According to Tanksley’s curatorial statement, “Several of the works deal instead with the human condition, sending us on a journey of inward examination as we wonder what our place in this world is and where we are going.”

Majoring in Visual Arts at Fordham, William Tanksley was raised in Woodstock, but moved with his family to Red Hook when he was eleven. Tanksley’s internship at WAAM consisted of one to three days per week for about a ten week period last summer. In addition to selecting works for The Beauty of Discord, Tanksley’s projects at WAAM included helping with installations, cataloging works of art, assisting with photography, conducting research, and creating a brochure to engage children and families during gallery visits.

Also opening March 6 and continuing through March 28 in the Main Gallery is Recent Work juried by Carl Van Brunt of the Van Brunt Gallery, Beacon; a solo exhibition of work by Susan Togut; Small Works juried by John Kleinhans and Paula Nelson, and works by Active Member Howard Finkelson. The Youth Exhibition Space will feature student work from Saugerties High School.

All WAAM exhibitions and programs are supported by the WAAM Founders’ Circle, other individual and business supporters, and our artist membership. For more information about exhibitions and programs at the WAAM, go to www.woodstockart.org or call 845 679 2940. The Woodstock Artists Association is located at 28 Tinker Street in the center of Woodstock and is open Friday and Saturday from 12 to 6 pm and Sunday, Monday and Thursday from 12 to 5 pm.

Two New Exhibitions at the Greene County Council on the Arts
The Greene County Council on the Arts’ Catskill Gallery will show two new exhibitions through April 10. Lumina showcases 33 photographic artists’ works and Monumental and Intimate Visions highlights the work of Jane Culp and Susan Miiller.

Lumina is co-sponsored by the Greene County Council on the Arts (GCCA) and the Greene County Camera Club (GCCC). Jurors Fawn Potash and Jill Skupin Burkholder represent each organization as well as maintaining active art/photo studios, teaching and arts management work. They reviewed over 300 images, delighted at the sophistication, craftsmanship and beauty of the submissions combining work by amateur, hobbyist and professional photographers in a wide-ranging exploration of light as subject, concept and process. The Lumina exhibition is comprised of seventy-eight images surveying this theme with landscapes under a dramatic sky, moody weather and shadows, glowing abstracts, impressionist interpretations, refracted and reflected light. Some images capture light seen only by the optical magic of cameras, iPhones and Photoshop. Lumina’s artists see light as a compositional element, as a description of the time of day, as elemental color. Natural light and unnatural light, street light, sunlight and moonlight, hazy light and kaleidoscopic light create a spectrum of luminous approaches.

Participating artists include Nora Adelman, Jules Bullard, Dan Burkholder, Eileen Camuto, Donn Critchell, Steve Crohn, Daniel Marcus, Del Higgins, Patti Ferrara, Yoram Gelman, Linda Gordetsky, Bob Haggerty, Dorothy Haines, David Jeffery, Erika Klein, Maria Kolodziej-Zincio, Bruce LaPierre, Terez Limer, Robert Lipgar, Leo Loomie, Virginia Luppino, Dennis Mower, Dennis O’Clair, Martin Pollack, Erica Potrzeba, Susan Sammis, Joan Satterlee, Tom Satterle, Stephanie Schmidt, Stan Rose, Elizabeth Vermilyea and William Weber.

You can see a slide show of the work in this exhibit at www.greenearts.org.

Also on view at the GCCA Catskill Gallery through April 10 is a two-person show, Jane Culp and Susan Miiller: Monumental and Intimate Visions.

Jane Culp received her BFA at Washington University and her MFA at Yale, later studying as a Fulbright scholar in Italy. The drawings featured in this exhibit mark her days as Artist in Residence at Yosemite, Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks as well as Anza Borrrego State Park in Southern California. She has mounted solo exhibits at the Queens College of the City of New York, the Bowery Gallery and the Painting Gallery in New York City, among others. Culp’s charcoal masterpieces have been featured in eight museum exhibitions throughout the West.

Susan Miiller’s Souvenirs reference the idea of taking something home from a visit. In fact she does. Starting with photographs, Miiller builds collage pieces to inform later works in paint. Her subject depicts familiar tourist destinations, Greene County’s waterfalls, the same ones seen in turn of the century post cards, hiker’s snapshots and landscape artists from the Hudson River School forward. This set of small scale oils reads like a pictorial series, offering variations on a theme. The subject is romantic and traditionally seen from a vantage point and distance that feels familiar. Miiller’s painting technique is unusual though, working additively and subtractively in her studio to emphasize the formal elements, stylizing and abstracting the subject as she creates a re-membered version of these magical places. The palette is mostly in a range of nostalgic warm-toned golds and browns, painted in a loose brushy style suggesting the movement of water over rocks. Miiller’s Souvenirs recall the French translation of the word, to remember.

Susan Miiller studied art at SUNY New Paltz for her BFA and later received her MFA from the University of North Texas, returning in 1999 to SUNY New Paltz as a lecturer on painting and drawing. She has exhibited nationwide including the Samuel Dorsky Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Dallas Museum of Art among others. Her artwork is included in many important public and private collections including The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Sterling Software and Centex Corporation. Miiller’s 2006 Catskill Conservation Center residency at the Platte Clove Cabin may have influenced her work on waterfalls as it is the only source of running water on the property.

The GCCA Catskill Gallery is located at 398 Main Street, Catskill, NY. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, and second and third Saturdays from 12 to 8 pm. For more information, call the gallery at 518 943 3400 or visit www.greenearts.org.