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In memory of renowned musicologist Ernest Sanders, a longtime Orange County summer resident who attended his son Peter’s festival every year between 1993 and 2016 and died this past winter at 99, McLane next Friday night will lead the audience on what she calls her “Garden Tour.” The parade of compositions she’ll play ranges from Francois Couperin’s Butterflies and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Daisies to Frederic Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee and Claude Debussy’s Nocturne. McLane started performing the “tour” during the spring of 2017, as a spinoff from her 2016 CD Birds and Beethoven.
“The flow of the program starts in early morning, when there’s still dew on the flowers, and ends in the evening,” McLane said this week during a telephone conversation from her home on the Strafford town line. “It’s like a big arc of a story.
“You have a sort of movie going on.”
On the 25th anniversary of the festival, Sanders, a cellist for the New York City Ballet Company, continues to encourage that kind of playfulness among the performers he invites from big-city classical ensembles, as well as from Upper Valley musicians such as McLane, who previously performed at the 2014 and 2016 gatherings.
“It’s different in the summer than the rest of the year, when most of us are playing in big orchestras in programs chosen for us,” Sanders said last week, in a telephone conversation from his rental home in Tunbridge. “Here, you get to play the music you choose.”
Sanders is hosting a wide range of performances by the festival’s principal players, starting tonight at 7 with a free, open rehearsal at the Chandler. The ensemble includes violinist and festival veteran Arturo Delmoni (Sanders’ colleague in the ballet orchestra); violists Michael Roth (a former concertmaster of the Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestra) and Katarzyna Bryla-Weiss (another New York City Ballet accompanist); ballet orchestra bass player Marji Danilow; violinist Joanna Maurer of the American Chamber Players sextet; and pianist Adrienne Kim, who teaches summers at the Kinhaven Music School in Weston, Vt.
The first formal concert is scheduled for 7:30 Saturday night, with the ensemble performing works by Mozart, Ralph Vaughan Williams and by the festival’s resident composer Robert Washut, who blends jazz with chamber music.
And on Sunday morning at 11, players from the Vermont Youth Orchestra will join the festival principals at the eighth annual Breakfast with Bach/Baroque Brunch in the Chandler Center’s Upper Gallery. The gathering moves to neighboring Bethany Church at 12:30 for the main concert.
The first full week of performances ends on Wednesday night, with McLane leading a master class at the Chandler for up-and-coming pianists at the music hall, where the public is invited free of charge.
The second full week kicks off next Thursday with another free, open rehearsal. And on the morning of Aug. 25, the festival ensemble will preview for area children the works of Beethoven, Dvorak and other composers that they’ll be performing that night. McLane looks forward to bringing her 5-year-old son Luke, currently a devotee of the upright bass, to the preview, where kids will be asked to draw and/or write about the music they are hearing.
“It’s great to have something close by, especially with a little kid,” McLane said. “It’s a very family-friendly festival.”
The Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival runs between tonight and Aug. 26. To learn more about schedules and ticket prices at the Chandler Music Hall, visit cvcmf.org or call 802-728-6464. Tickets cost $10 for the festival-closing concert at Woodstock’s North Universalist Chapel on Aug. 26 at 4 p.m.
Best Bets
Saxophonist Mike Parker offers three doses of his band Soulfix, with Royalton’s Alison “AliT” Turner as lead vocalist, this weekend. The ensemble’s journey starts Friday night at 6:30 on the Haddad Bandstand in New London. And on Saturday, the band reassembles at 2 p.m. at the Flanders Stage on Sunapee Harbor and again at 7 at the Farmer’s Table in Grantham.
The Old Church Theater troupe performs Dan Weatherer’s one-act drama The Holding and Marianne Harding’s one-act comedy Squish three times this weekend, in the company’s temporary home at 176 Waits River Road in Bradford, Vt. The stagings are scheduled for 7:30 on Friday and Saturday nights and for 4 on Sunday afternoon. For tickets ($6 to $12) and more information, call 802-222-3322 or email reservations@oldchurchtheater.org.
Fresh off accompanying the singers during Opera North’s Summerfest, cellist Iris Jortner and violinist Ralph Allen are collaborating with the Classicopia chamber-music team on piano quartets of Mendelssohn, Dvorak and Josef Suk during three concerts around the Upper Valley this weekend, starting Friday night at 7:30 with a house concert in Hanover; with limited seating, reservations of tickets ($40) are required through classicopia.org.
The mini-tour moves to Hanover’s United Church of Christ at 7:30 on Saturday night, before ending at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon at 1 on Sunday afternoon. Admission is $18 to both church concerts.
The final evening of the New York Theater Workshop’s month of staging plays-in-progress at Dartmouth College’s Warner Bentley Theater begins at 4 on Saturday, with Murielle Borst-Tarrant performing her one-woman, autobiographical show Memoirs of a Native American Princess from Brooklyn.
And at 7:30, Tina Satter directs her non-yet-titled play built around the transcript of a 2017 interrogation of a 25-year-old Texas woman after her arrest on charges of leaking top-secret U.S. Intelligence.
To reserve tickets ($9 to $13) and learn more, visit hop.dartmouth.edu or call 603-646-2422.
Scottish fiddler Katie McNally and pianist Neil Perlman perform at the Library Arts Center in Newport on Saturday night at 7. Tickets cost $16 in advance (call 603-863-3040 or visit libraryartscenter.org) and $20 at the door.
Looking Ahead
The second annual ArtisTree Theatre Music Festival will open next Thursday night at 7:30 at the Grange Theatre in South Pomfret, with the first of 10 performances of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. For tickets ($18 to $25 for Thursday’s preview, $28 to $35 for all others) and information about the festival’s subsequent productions, visit artistreevt.org or call 802-457-3500.
Theater/Performance Art
The New London Barn Playhouse opens its final production of the summer, the musical whodunit Murder for Two, starting next Wednesday afternoon at 2 and Wednesday night at 7:30. The play runs through Labor Day weekend.
This weekend The Barn completes its run of Newsies, with performances tonight at 7:30, at 2 on Friday afternoon, at 7:30 on Friday and Saturday nights and at 5 on Sunday afternoon. To reserve tickets ($20) for these and subsequent productions, visit nlbarn.org or call 603-526-6710.
The Newport Opera House Association holds two sessions of auditions next week for its fall play, The Foreigner. To sign up for an audition next Thursday night between 7 and 10, or on Aug. 25 between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., visit newportoperahouse.com. To learn more, call 603-863-2412 or email info@newportoperahouse.com. Rehearsals begin on Sept. 11 for the comedy, in which the denizens of a fishing lodge avoid an English guest by pretending that they don’t speak or understand English. The play is scheduled to run Nov. 2, 3 and 4.
Music
Patty Casey and the Wicked Fine Players perform Americana, folk and bluegrass during the Feast and Field Market in Barnard tonight starting at 5:30.
The Strangled Darlings duo plays Americana music on the bandstand at Denny Park in downtown Bradford, Vt., tonight at 6. Admission is by donation.
Singer-songwriter Lissie closes the Front Porch series of free concerts at Lebanon’s Colburn Park tonight at 7.
The Sabouyouma Afro-Funk Band performs on Friday night at 5:30, on the back lawn of the Woodstock History Center.
The Kearsarge Community Band plays at the Claremont Senior Center on Friday night from 6:30 to 8.
The Amherst (Mass.) Jazz Ensemble performs big-band favorites at the Albert Bridge School in Brownsville on Saturday, during a community picnic and dance co-sponsored by Ascutney Winds and the school. The gathering starts at 4 p.m. Admission is by donation.
Rusted Chrome plays classic rock at the Flanders Stage on Sunapee Harbor on Saturday afternoon at 5, and singer-guitarist Tom Pirozzoli performs there on Sunday afternoon at 1.
Arabiqa shares Arab music and dance on Sunday afternoon at 2 at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish. Admission is included in the park’s entry fee of $10.
Troubadour Jim Yeager appears with The Majik Box Band on Sunday afternoon at 5, on the bandstand behind the Hartland Recreation Center.
The Hobos play bluegrass on the Norwich Town Green on Sunday afternoon at 5. Admission is free.
The Brookfield, Vt.-based indie folk duo Jennings & Macomber performs on the common in Strafford on Tuesday night at 6. The suggested donation is $5.
The Shana Stack Band plays country at Grantham’s recreation park on Tuesday night at 6.
The Renegade Groove quartet performs funk and rock at the Fairlee common, on Tuesday night at 6:30.
The Moonlighters play big-band classics and pop favorites on the green in Canaan on Tuesday night at 6:30. In the event of bad weather, the concert will go on in the Canaan Methodist Church.
FLEW-Z covers rock bands such as Aerosmith and Van Halen on Wednesday night at 6:30, on the Ben Mere Bandstand overlooking Sunapee Harbor.
Bar and Club Circuit
Singer-songwriter Sky King plays Peyton Place in Orford tonight starting at 6.
Guitarist Ted Mortimer leads the Repeat Offenders into Windsor Station for a set of rock tonight at 7. The Burlington-based rock-fusion band Swimmer appears at 9:30 on Friday night and Fu’Chunk plays on Saturday night at 9:30.
Frydaddy comes home to Hartland Four Corners to rock the Skunk Hollow Tavern on Friday night at 9.
Nick’s Other Band fills the Salt hill Pub in downtown Lebanon with classic rock on Friday night at 9. Better Days keeps that vibe rolling on Saturday night at 9 with a set of blues, R&B and funk.
Singer-guitarist Mike Preston blends rock and country at Hanover’s Salt hill Pub on Friday night at 9.
During a blues-heavy weekend at the Salt hill Pub in West Lebanon, John Lackard sings and plays on Friday night at 9 and Arthur James appears on Saturday night at 9.
Doug Lantz plays ukelele and tells stories at Newport’s Salt hill Pub on Saturday night at 9.
Country singer-songwriter Dwayne Benjamin performs on Saturday night at 6, during the weekly pizza night at Crossmolina Farm in West Corinth. Pizza and craft brews are sold between 5 and 8.
Pianist Sonny Saul plays jazz at the On the River Inn in Woodstock on Saturday and Wednesday nights from 6:30 to 9.
Keyboardist Doc Winslow, bassist Tom Lord, guitarist Kit Creeger and drummer Bryant Harris play their weekly gig during the weekly brunch at Poor Thom’s Tavern in Meriden on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Bluesman John Lackard plays the SILO Distillery in Windsor between 1 and 3 on Sunday afternoon.
Sensible Shoes rocks the buffet supper ($10 to $25) at Loch Lyme Lodge with on Sunday night at 6. And the Brian Cook Band performs rock and pop during the weekly cookout ($8 to $20) on Wednesday night at 5:30.
Open Mics
Woodstock musician Jim Yeager hosts open mics at ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret tonight at 7, and at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners on Wednesday night at 8.
String players of all ages and abilities are welcome at the weekly acoustic jam session at South Royalton’s BALE Commons on Friday night from 6:30 to 10.
The Rice’s Mills Community Center in Thetford is inviting Upper Valley musicians and fans of live music to an open mic on Sunday night, after the community association’s potluck supper, which starts at 6. For more information on playing at the center, which is on Route 132 west of Tucker Hill Road, email mb.gravityhill@gmail.com.
Joe Stallsmith leads his weekly hootenanny of Americana, folk and bluegrass on Monday night at 6 at Salt hill Pub in Hanover.
Fiddler Jakob Breitbach leads a weekly acoustic jam session of bluegrass, Americana and old-timey music on Tuesday nights at 7 at The Filling Station Bar and Grill in White River Junction.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.