Category: arts
MIDDLEBURY — When Bill Sims Jr. and Mark LaVoie perform at Middlebury College and the Art House in the Marble Works this Thursday and Friday, it won’t be their first time playing together. Since Sims, a guitarist and vocalist from New York City, first met Bristol native and harmonica virtuoso LaVoie at a blues festival in Burlington back in 1992, their mutual interest in folk music and the blues has blossomed into a 17-year friendship and collaboration.
BRIDPORT — Jill Vickers still remembers walking into the small hotel in a remote town in northern Afghanistan shoulder-to-shoulder with a handful of other young American women. Snowdrifts, she remembered, had accumulated in the halls of the hotel, and when the women made their way to their door, they realized they would be spending the night in their sleeping bags on the floor in an unheated room.
Welcome to Afghanistan in 1969.
VERGENNES — Earlier this month, Vergennes Opera House officials learned they would get a key piece of funding in their quest to install sprinklers in the City Hall theater: The Vermont Arts Council awarded the opera house a $20,000 Cultural Facilities Grant to support the project.
After adding the grant to a $32,588 Vermont Downtown Development Board tax credit the theater was granted in 2009, opera house executive director Jackson Evans said board members are confident they can raise the rest of the money for the $65,000 project, which they hope will begin next month.
Meredith Wilson's classical musical about traveling salesman Harold Hill and a small town in Iowa marched onto the Town Hall Theater stage last week, performing to audiences that sold out as many as three weeks before the show opened.
The musical, directed by Doug Anderson and featuring a cast of 46, was months in the making, and Addison Independent photographer Trent Campbell tagged along from auditions to opening night. His photos, as well as Anderson's commentary about the musical, are collected in our behind-the-scenes look at the making of the "The Music Man."
The Independent took an early look at Mount Abraham High School's production of "Oklahoma!" More than 100 Abraham students will be on stage in Bristol starting Thursday night for the school’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical “Oklahoma!” The show, the first collaboration for Rodgers and Hammerstein, garnered a special Pulitzer Prize after it opened on Broadway in 1943. Mount Abraham also produced the show in 1981 and 1995. The 2009 show runs Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with a 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday.
Independent photos/Trent Campbell
BRISTOL — Against the backdrop of a steady beat of African drums, Soriba Simbo Camara leapt and twisted, his body, contorting rhythmically to the sound. He carried a cow’s tail in one hand, a symbol of power in Guinean culture, and wore a traditional West African shirt. The dance was feverish but graceful, and at its end, Camara catapulted his body from the ground in a tremendous jump.
Camara wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow, and caught his breath.
“It keeps you young,” he said, grinning just as he had all through the dance.
RIPTON — Ensconced in a former farmhouse tucked away amid the tree-filled slopes of Ripton, one could already argue that attending classes at the North Branch School is akin to going back to nature.
But the more than two-dozen students and faculty at North Branch took that concept a step further last week, as part of their contribution to the more than 5,200 worldwide global warming action events that occurred on Oct. 24 through the efforts of 350.org.
The Little City Players opened the second half of their 2009 season last Thursday with a production of Susan Sandler’s “Crossing Delancey.” The show, which was popularized in a 1988 movie starring Amy Irving and Peter Riegert, tells the story of a New York City single whose life is complicated by her grandmother and the matchmaker who team up to find her a husband. The Vergennes production features Hannah Weisman, Janet Stambolian, Anna Sun, King Milne and Glen Eastman. “Crossing Delancey” continues Oct. 29-31 at the Vergennes Opera House.
