Film: Close

(Rated PG-13, 1 hour, 44 minutes)

Friday, March 31 through Sunday, April 9

Friday Shows @ 7:15pm

Saturday Shows @ 4:15 & 7:15pm

Sunday Shows @ 4:15 & 7:15pm

Theater 2, Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

The intense friendship between two thirteen-year old boys Leo and Remi suddenly gets disrupted. Struggling to understand what has happened, Léo approaches Sophie, Rémi's mother. "Close" is a film about friendship and responsibility.

Robert Burke Warren:
Cash on Cash

MAUDE ADAMS THEATER HUB

Saturday, April 1, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

An evening of music and storytelling about Johnny Cash presented by Robert Burke Warren, who has recently edited a book by the same title.

The Moss Ensemble

CONCERTS & CONVERSATIONS

Saturday, April 15, 2023
@ 8:00pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

Join this quartet of world-class performers for an evening of adventurous and beautiful music. Expect pieces by Chopin and Haydn and works from living composers, as well as stories that help illuminate the music….all of which we hope will excite and move you.

Featured among the evening's offerings are a song cycle by Windham's esteemed impresario/conductor/composer Robert Manno and works by Andes' remarkable violinist/counter-tenor/composer Marshall Coid. Please join us for conversation and a reception after the show.

The Gottabees
"Go Home Tiny Monster"

FAMILY PERFORMANCES

Saturday, May 6, 2023
@ 2:00pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

After a sudden storm, Sylvie and her loving family of homespun creatures find themselves in need of a new home. Luckily, they have an audience full of people who can help them out! Go Home Tiny Monster is a wildly creative theatrical ode to a community's generosity.

The show, told entirely without words, features The Gottabees’ signature mix of puppetry, live music, physical theater, and joyously absurd sillines. The show was inspired by real-life events experienced by members of the group. The audience participates in showing how to help build a home for the characters on the stage.

Comedy in the Catskills

MAUDE ADAMS THEATER HUB

Saturday, May 20, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

The Catskill Mountain Foundation and the Maude Adams Theater Hub present Comedy in the Catskills, an evening of stand up comedy. Produced by Hunter-based comedian, Josh Fromer, Comedy in the Catskills will feature headliner and comedy superstar, Derek Drescher along with an all-star ensemble of established and upcoming nationally touring comedians. All proceeds benefit the Maude Adams Theater Hub.

About the headliner, Derek Drescher: NYC based comedian Derek Drescher can be seen performing his unique brand of stand up comedy all over New York City and beyond. His resume includes performing at the legendary Skankfest comedy festival, opening up for Aaron Berg, appearing on Netflix and cohosting the “On the Gate” podcast along side fellow comedian Geo Perez. In addition to his comedic exploits, Derek is a mental health and recovery advocate.

Also Performing:

Adam Hmada: Brooklyn born Adam Hmada is a rising star in the New York comedy scene. His quick wit, master story telling and unique perspective never fails to garner both laughs and admiration from audiences at some of the biggest comedy clubs in the city.

Cassidy O’Malley: Host of the wildly popular “Who’s that Jawn?” Podcast, Cassidy O’Malley has performed stand up at The Stand in New York City and The Dojo of Comedy in New Jersey.

Nick Bailey: Nick Bailey is a long time Hudson Valley Favorite performing and producing shows at major venues throughout the New York. Nick recently featured for Mark Normand at the legendary Comic Strip comedy club in Manhattan.

Memorializing the Masters: Works by Mozart, Hüllmandel, Beethoven and Clara Schumann

CONCERTS & CONVERSATIONS
ACADEMY OF FORTEPIANO PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

with fortepianists
Andrew Willis, Audrey Axinn, Maria Rose

Sunday, May 28, 2023
@ 8:00pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

The renowned faculty of the Academy of Fortepiano Performance will present a diverse program of music played on historical pianos from the Catskill Mountain Foundation Piano Performance Museum, Steven E. Greenstein collection. The sound world of the 18th and 19th century masters is recreated as the music is performed on the instruments of their time.

Audrey Axinn is a sensitive and vibrant performer on historical pianos and a teacher of historical piano performance at The Juilliard School and Mannes School of Music. She was the associate dean and a member of the team that launched Juilliard's new international branch campus in China.

Maria van Epenhuysen Rose, a native of the Netherlands, is a brilliant performer on historical pianos, covering a wide range of repertoire. She also holds a PhD in musicology from New York University and has published many articles on piano performance practice.

For Andrew Willis, artistry and scholarship go hand in hand. For several decades he has explored the historical development of keyboard instruments and their performance practice while maintaining a commitment to the study, performance, and teaching of the widest possible range of repertoire. A Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Willis teaches piano, fortepiano, and harpsichord performance and leads courses on keyboard literature and performance practice. He has appeared as soloist with such period-instrument chamber orchestras as the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, the Apollo Ensemble, the Magnolia Baroque Festival, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. In 2005, Andrew Willis toured China presenting works of American, Chinese, and Chinese-American composers.

"Embraceable Gershwin"

Dr. Joanne Polk, piano
Dr. Jeffrey Langford, lecture

CONCERTS & CONVERSATIONS

Saturday, June 24, 2023
@ 2:00pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

What is your favorite Gershwin song?
Embraceable You?
Fascinatin' Rhythm?
Someone to Watch Over Me?
The Man I Love?
Somebody Loves Me?

The great pianist Earl Wild transcribed all these alluring Gershwin tunes into virtuosic etudes and variations--all fun, passionate pieces for solo piano. Would there be anything sweeter than a Saturday matinee with pianist Joanne Polk performing these arrangements of Gershwin's songs while Jeffrey Langford walks us through the life and times of the composer?

You might even want to sing along.

Cécile McLorin-Salvant

JAZZ MUSIC

Saturday, July 8, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Orpheum Performing Arts Center
6050 Main Street, Tannersville, NY 12485

Cécile McLorin Salvant is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as“a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings”.

Salvant will be performing with her Quintet at the Orpheum Theater in Tannersville as part of the July weekend celebration of the Catskill Mountain Foundation’s 25th Anniversary. Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, theater, jazz, baroque and folkloric music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor.
Salvant won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010. She has received three consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for The Window, Dreams and Daggers, and For One To Love, and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album WomanChild. In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. Nonesuch Records released Ghost Song in March 2022. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, of a French mother and Haitian father, she started classical piano studies at 5, sang in a children’s choir at 8, and started classical voice lessons as a teenager.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

MAUDE ADAMS THEATER HUB

Thursday & Friday,
July 13-14, 2023
@ 7:00pm
Saturday, July 15, 2023
@ 2:00 & 7:00pm

Orpheum Performing Arts Center
6050 Main Street, Tannersville, NY 12485

Winner of the Tony and the Drama Desk Awards for Best Book, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has charmed audiences across the country with its effortless wit and humor. Featuring a fast-paced, wildly funny and touching book by Rachel Sheinkin and a truly fresh and vibrant score by William Finn, this bee is one unforgettable experience.

An eclectic group of six mid-pubescents vie for the spelling championship of a lifetime. While candidly disclosing hilarious and touching stories from their home lives, the tweens spell their way through a series of (potentially made-up) words, hoping never to hear the soul-crushing, pout-inducing, life un-affirming "ding" of the bell that signals a spelling mistake. Six spellers enter; one speller leaves a champion! At least the losers get a juice box.

A riotous ride, complete with audience participation, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a delightful den of comedic genius. It is a fast-paced crowd pleaser and an instant theatre patron favorite.

American String Quartet

CONCERTS & CONVERSATIONS
HUNTER INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

Saturday, July 29, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

“…luxurious, beautifully sculpted performances”
— THE NEW YORK TIMES

Internationally recognized as one of the world's finest quartets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. For the upcoming season at the Doctorow Center, the Quartet will perform Schubert's String Quartet in A minor, D.804, Bartok's String Quartet No. 3, and Beethoven's String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135.

The Quartet celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2019, and, in its years of touring, has performed in all fifty states and has appeared in the most important concert halls worldwide. The group’s presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartók, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

DANCE
ORPHEUM DANCE PROGRAM

THREE SHOWS
Friday, August 11, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Saturday, August 12, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Sunday, August 13, 2023
@ 2:00pm

Orpheum Performing Arts Center
6050 Main Street, Tannersville, NY 12485

The magic continues this summer with CMF’s spectacular production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which premiered during the summer of 2019. This unique production, conceived by former Metropolitan Opera ballerina Victoria Rinaldi, transports the audience to an enchanted wood to witness what hilarity unfolds, when fairies meddle with the love lives of mortals. All ends well with a triple wedding and gala ballet. Dancers from the country’s most elite dance programs join with students of CMF’s Orpheum Dance Program and don gossamer fairy wings in this midsummer comedic ballet. Actors, under the direction of theater artist Zach Gibson, provide comedic scenes and narration from Shakespeare’s play. The acting melds beautifully with the charming choreography by Margo Sappington and Victoria Rinaldi, and the Mendelssohn score is sumptuous, creating an evening that is a perfect combination of spoken word and dance.

Lecture by Dr. Jeffrey Langford

CONCERTS & CONVERSATIONS
PIANISTS IN THE MOUNTAINS FESTIVAL

Monday, August 21, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

Dr. Jeffrey Langford received his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the music history faculty of Manhattan School of Music in 1982, after teaching at Skidmore College for six years. Dr. Langford retired from teaching music history at MSM in 2022. He presently serves as a MSM faculty member, advisor, and associate dean of doctoral studies. Dr. Langford has devoted much of his research and writing to the music of Hector Berlioz, especially its literary and autobiographical connections. He is the author of an annotated bibliography of research materials on Berlioz titled Hector Berlioz: A Guide to Research. In addition, Dr. Langford has appeared as a pre concert lecturer at the New York Metropolitan Opera for the past ten years, where he presents talks on both French opera and the works of Verdi. His recent book Evenings at the Opera is a collection of essays addressing the question of the relationship of music to drama in opera from Mozart to Britten.

Hope Boykin Dance:
"...a STATE of love"

DANCE
A PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM WITH THE JOYCE THEATER

Saturday, September 16, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Orpheum Performing Arts Center
6050 Main Street, Tannersville, NY 12485

This new production, with the working title “… a STATE of love." is a staged moment, centering on an extremely transparent excavation where the words and scripted text, serve as blueprint and balm. A complex mixture of movement and sound score, Hope Boykin, personalizes the arduous work of digging, self discovery, and reshaping a personal narrative; artists and performers move and speak as vocal bodies of this specific and particular state of love—on the brink of becoming, in every sense of the word, hope.

Hope Boykin was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, Hope was a three-time recipient of the American Dance Festival’s Young Tuition Scholarship. She attended Howard University in Washington, DC., when she felt a call to move to New York City to study at The Ailey School. Hope joined The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2000, where she continues to perform her duties as a dancer as well as her work as an educator, mentor, speaker, and choreographer.

No Strings Marionette Company
"The Hobbit"

FAMILY PERFORMANCES

Wednesday, October 18, 2023
@ 3:45pm

Thursday, October 19, 2023
@ 3:45pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

Bilbo Baggins is a Hobbit who wants to be left alone in quiet comfort in his home in The Shire. But the Wizard Gandalf comes along with a band of Dwarves and draws Bilbo into their quest. Based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, in No Strings Marionette Company's adaptation of this stirring adventure fantasy, puppeteers adeptly animate marionettes, life-size body puppets and amazing puppet hybrids.

Puppeteers Dan Baginski and Barbara Paulson have toured America together for over sixteen years. Their traveling stage transforms any space into an intimate theater, where the seamless blend of movement, music and masterful manipulation captivates young and old alike.

With puppeteers in full view, the audience sees how the puppets are brought to life. These Vermont artisans lovingly hand craft the marionettes, props and scenery, whether for an original tale or an adaptation of a classic. Shows begin with an interactive song featuring audience members, and finish with demonstrations sparked by the audiences' curious questions.

Romantically French: Music of Debussy, Ravel, and Cécile Chaminade

Dr. Joanne Polk, piano
Dr. Jeffrey Langford, lecture

CONCERTS & CONVERSATIONS

Saturday, November 4, 2023
@ 2:00pm

Doctorow Center for the Arts
7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12442

Come join husband and wife team Dr. Jeffrey Langford and Dr. Joanne Polk as they take a nostalgic musical stroll through 19th century Paris. Musicologist Jeffrey Langford will help us understand the evolution of French Romantic Music through the eyes of composers Louise Farrenc (1804-75), Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) and Claude Debussy (1862-1918), with music performed by pianist Joanne Polk. Dr. Langford will talk about the musical language of French Nationalism, as well as the struggles of 19th century female composers as they tried, tirelessly, not only to compose but to get their music published so that their music would be performed, heard, and appreciated.

Questions and interactions with Drs. Langford and Polk after the lecture/recital will be invited and welcome.

Windham Festival Chamber Orchestra

Robert Manno,
Music Director & Conductor

Simone Dinnerstein, piano

CONCERTS & CONVERSATIONS

Saturday, November 25, 2023
@ 7:30pm

Orpheum Performing Arts Center
6050 Main Street, Tannersville, NY 12485

This Thanksgiving, the Windham Festival Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Robert Manno, returns with a holiday program featuring acclaimed piano soloist Simone Dinnerstein.

The evening’s program includes:

Bach: E Major Concerto BWV1053
Bach: F Major Concerto BWV1057
Handel: Entrance of the Queen of Sheba
Copland: Quiet City
Bach: Orchestral Suite #3

Since 2000 the Windham Festival Chamber Orchestra under the direction of composer/conductor Robert Manno has earned accolades and national attention through the many broadcasts of its live performances from the Windham Chamber Music Festival and Catskill Mountain Foundation over American Public Media’s Performance Today.

Simone Dinnerstein has a distinctive musical voice. The Washington Post has called her “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.” She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

Robert Manno is Co-Director of the Windham Chamber Music Festival, an award-winning composer, and an acclaimed conductor whose many performances from the Windham Festival and the Catskill Mountain Foundation have been featured nationally on “Performance Today.” The Atlanta Audio Society has described him as “a composer of serious music of considerable depth and spiritual beauty.”

The Hot Sardines: "Holiday Stomp"

JAZZ MUSIC

Saturday, December 16, 2023
@ 8:00pm

Orpheum Performing Arts Center
6050 Main Street, Tannersville, NY 12485

“Not many bands have seized the postmillennial early-jazz spotlight with as much gusto as The Hot Sardines.”
– Nate Chinen WBGO

“These are times that need live music. And I don’t know of anything that brings people together like the joy of hearing traditional jazz live,” says Elizabeth Bougerol, co-leader of The Hot Sardines, with pianist and bandleader, Evan Palazzo. These mischief-makers of hot jazz have been described as “potent and assured” (The New York Times) and “simply phenomenal” (The Times, London). “Everything in our DNA is about connecting with the audience. That’s where we feel most at home,” says Elizabeth, of playing live with the eight-piece band (including one wildly percussive tap dancer). The Sardines have gone from speakeasies and underground parties in Brooklyn, to festival crowds of 25,000 and a TV debut on Later… with Jools Holland. “That’s where jazz lives,” adds Evan. “In the playing, in sharing that experience, in coming together to create a moment that won’t happen again.”