Can never get this one out of my head:

Or, if you would like to understand the strange and wonderful lyrics:

We are so blessed to live in a community full of art and artists, a community in which (despite our New England reticence) we get to know our neighbors better over time, discovering qualities and talents in them we may not have been aware of just at first. You may know Peg as the bread lady, for those crusty sourdough loaves that emerge from her Wonalancet brick oven. She is also, among many other things, a musician, singer and songwriter. This one always makes me cry…

Seth Austen and Beverly Woods write: We’re really excited about the first annual Traditional Roots Music Week coming up July 5-12 at World Fellowship Center in Albany, NH. We’ve wanted to do this workshop for quite a while and the partnership with World Fellowship Center is a perfect match.

We’ll be exploring various strains of traditional instrumental and vocal folk music: music of, by & for the people. Not just entertainment, this music has helped build communities, tell the news and sound calls to political action. Our emphasis is on singing and playing together. During the week, we’ll teach traditional folk songs, fiddle tunes, how to learn by ear, group and harmony singing, playing your instrument in an old time string band, jamming skills, creative backup, improvisation and more. Styles include Appalachian, blues, old time bluegrass, shape note and New England contradance music.

We’ll also explore the folk process, how songs change as they travel from regions and generations, and some of the history around them. Some coaching will be available on individual instruments including fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo, autoharp, dulcimer, piano, etc. There will be various opportunities to play together through the week, culminating in homemade music and dance parties on the weekend.
We hope you will join us for a wonderful week of singing and playing traditional music in the White Mountains. Whether you are just starting or have been playing for years, this camp will help you move to the next level in a supportive community atmosphere.

The Tamworth Outing Club holds contra dances every Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. through the summer at the Town House in Tamworth Village. The first Saturday is a little different: Dudley Laufman will be calling a dance at the Brett School at 7:30 p.m., preceding Tamworth’s fireworks. Callers for the rest of the summer are Dudley Laufman on July 11, David Harvey on July 18, Sue Hunt on July 25, Dudley Laufman on August 1 and 29, Brian Byron Ricker on August 8 and 22, and Frank Woodward on August 15.

On May 30, the Arts Council of Tamworth convened a group of 35 to engage in the second stage of ACT’s ongoing strategic planning process. The group, which met in the spacious Coleman Great Room at Tin Mountain Conservation Center in Albany, NH, included representatives from many local arts organizations as well as artists, musicians, storytellers, teachers, local business people, non-profit board members, and others.

Facilitators Vince Pelote and Lynne Route of daVinci Consulting in Intervale, NH led the group through a series of diverse activities. Each participant contributed his or her particular gifts and point of view in a unique format called the World Café. From the discussions, the ACT board can now begin to identify action items and a timeline for reaching its goals.

During the first stage of ACT’s strategic planning, ACT’s steering committee and board members interviewed community members and ACT patrons, asking them about the role of ACT in their lives and the community as a whole. The task of the World Café group was to take the themes that emerged in these interviews and turn them into bold dream statements. From these dream statements, participants created a vision of where ACT will be in 2015 and what role it will play in nurturing creativity and community in the Mount Washington Valley and Lakes Region of New Hampshire.

Five themes emerged from the interviews and the World Café. The first two were these: ACT brings diverse and talented musicians and artists to the area, which fosters global awareness, and ACT creates opportunities for audiences and performers to connect with one another. The Mamadou Diabate concert this past year was a case in point. The multi-age audience was able to cluster on stage during intermission to examine at close hand the 21-stringed kora Mamadou built with his father, and they listened with rapt attention as Mamadou explained the history of the instrument, its construction, and his role as a member of a family who has passed on the music and culture of Mali for seven centuries. The day after the concert, Sandwich, NH photographer Susan Lirakis interviewed and photographed Mamadou as part of a current project of photographing people who are fulfilling their dreams.

The third and fourth themes were these: ACT exposes multiple generations to the arts, and ACT fosters the artistic development of our youth. Examples from this past year included the broad range of ages who gathered to listen to the riveting storyteller Simon Brooks, the senior citizens who came to the Albert Kim concert, appreciative that it was held in the afternoon, the young and old piano students who attended the Albert Kim concert, kids exploring painting on silk, modern dance and eco art, and the opportunity Brett School students had to sing and dance on stage with the Revels Repertory Company in May.

The final theme was endless partnerships. Examples of successful partnerships included ACT’s collaboration with the Brett School to present the Revels Repertory Company and the co-sponsorship, with the Chocorua Public Library, of a New Hampshire Humanities Council presentation on the art of film.

Working in small groups and all together, the World Café group deepened their understanding of these themes, told stories, shared ideas, and in the end created their dream statements.

The group envisioned bringing youth representation onto ACT’s program committee to ensure that ACT programming appeals to kids and teens as well as adults, and talked about mentoring youth to participate as producers and performers. They also discussed outreach to help parents understand the value of artistic development in their children, and the possibility of making an inventory of what programs are already available to local kids and developing new programs to fill in gaps. They talked about programming that can reach multiple age groups and about making sure programs are physically accessible to people of all ages, and to those who may need help with transportation or cost. The group envisioned ACT using technology to broaden its audience while continuing to bring the community together at live performances and workshops. The group also discussed the kinds of partnerships possible, from working more frequently with schools on combined artist residencies and performances to creating closer relationships with other local nonprofits in order to share resources and provide greater diversity of opportunity to the local community.

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The ACT board is now moving ahead with creating and implementing an action plan. First steps include a decision to make performances free for children 12 and under in the hope that more children will be exposed to ACT’s diverse performances and parents will feel more fiscally able to participate with their children. The board is exploring grants to provide transportation for those senior citizens who require it, and is working to create opportunities for local arts organizations to come together for further discussion of pooling resources and partnership possibilities. ACT is also seeking a teen representative for its programming committee. ACT will continue to share details of its strategic planning process with the community as they develop, and information about all of ACT’s activities can always be found here on our website.

ACT always welcomes input from community members. If you have ideas for projects you would like to see ACT involved in, wish to volunteer or support ACT in some other way, or have a young person you would like to see nominated for programming committee, please visit us here or call 603-323-8104.

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Arts on the Edge Wolfeboro kicks of its summer program with art and music. More info and tickets here, or click on the posters for more detailed info about each event.

Curry's John Brown (scroll over for details)

This year marks the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, and South Conway composer Ellen Schwindt has completed an opera about Brown just in time for the sesquicentennial. A Crime of Righteousness will be offered in a workshop performance at the World Fellowship Center in Albany, NH, on the Fourth of July, at 7:30 PM, with a world premiere on July 5 at 4:00 PM at the Leura Hill Eastman Performing Arts Center in Fryeburg, Maine.

Contending interpretations of John Brown as martyr vs. John Brown as murderer drive the opera through two of the main roles—Julia Ward Howe, who adores Brown, and Robert Penn Warren, who saw the schemer and scoundrel behind the righteous pretensions. Mary Edes, soprano, sings Julia Ward Howe’s part and Hans Stafford, baritone, sings the role of Robert Penn Warren. These characters meet in a history lecture sometime in the 1930s, and while the lecture is going on, the two principals explore their differences. John Brown inhabits another part of the stage and sings through the episodes of his life. Nick Gunn sings the role of John Brown.

Schwindt, who grew up in Kansas, sees the darker side of the renowned abolitionist, who achieved national prominence after his murderous sojourn in that state. Brown is generally extolled as a prescient hero of the emancipation movement, and is credited with inciting what is still often regarded as an inevitable national bloodbath over the issue of slavery. Schwindt, however, believes that Brown’s more likely effect was to simply close the door on any lingering hope for a peaceful solution. Her opera, A Crime of Righteousness, questions whether violence is ever an effective means of ending injustice.

The opera follows Brown through the major scenes of his adult life, during which he depended increasingly on other people’s money to support himself and his 20 children. When he moved from his longtime home in Ohio he left behind a trail of prosecutions for unpaid debts. He once mortgaged the same farm to several different people, separately but simultaneously, when he did not yet even hold title to it. On more than one occasion he accepted funds for one proposed project only to divert that money to another, without the knowledge or permission of his investors. Usually he adopted a tone of self-righteousness, blaming the perfidy of others for his own failures, yet the only actor in those episodes who seems to have crossed the line into fraud was Brown himself.

Slavery presented the perfect stage for Brown’s self-righteous inclination, and a clique of wealthy New England abolitionists reacted generously to Brown’s eternally outstretched hand. Those who funded the Emigrant Aid Society to fill Kansas Territory with antislavery settlers also provided a healthy stake for Brown, whose response to the tensions there was to enlist some of his sons and neighbors in the serial kidnapping and murder of unarmed settlers along Pottawatomie Creek.

From Kansas, Brown’s criminal ambitions turned national, and under the guise of returning to Kansas he solicited funds to bankroll his deadly raid on Harper’s Ferry. That foolhardy endeavor led only to more mayhem, to Brown’s execution, and to inflamed sectional tension on the eve of a crucial election. John Brown actively invited martyrdom, perhaps as redemption for his knavery or, as he would have construed it, in confirmation of his righteous life.

Four local businesses are sponsoring the production: Fryeburg Veterinary Hospital, Hastings Law Office, Mason and Mason Technology Insurance Services, Inc., and The Inn at Crystal Lake. Mountain Top Music Center, where Schwindt is music director, is collaborating on the project with World Fellowship Center (603-447-2280 or office@worldfellowshipcenter.org) and the Leura Hill Eastman Performing Arts Center. Admission to the workshop performance is $10. Tickets to the premiere on July 5 are $15. A students and senior rate of $5 is offered for both performances. Ticket sales and reservations are available at 207-935-9232 or at boxoffice@fryeburgacademy.org.

"Collection" —Rosy Lamb (www.rosylamb.com)

Arts Council of Tamworth’s primary summer activity is its Annual Art Show & Sale. ACT invites local and visiting artists, both professional and amateur, to share their work with the community. The art show is a great opportunity for collectors wanting to discover new artists and for those simply looking to purchase art for their own homes. It allows emerging artists a chance to go public, and for professional artists can be an opportunity to share work that is different in some way from the work they show in galleries: experiments in some new medium, for example. Each artist can submit up to three pieces in any media, at least one of which must be offered for sale. Interested artists can download a registration form with all show details here, email us to request a form here, or call Myles Grinstead at 323-7182 for more information. The deadline for registering is July 10 and work must be dropped off on Thursday, July 23, between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. The public is invited to meet the artists at the Artists’ Reception and Opening on Friday, July 24, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. The show will be open on Saturday, July 25, and Sunday, July 26 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.