ABOUT | Weekend of Chamber Music

AndyCarrieBenched — Co-Artistic Directors: Andrew Waggoner (composer and violinist) and Caroline Stinson (cellist)

Artistic Directors’ Message

Become Music

One of the great blessings in being part of WCM is the chance to make music every summer in the Catskills, a place of unique and shimmering beauty. Its harmony of water, light and variegated hills seems to amplify and radiate back to us the harmonies bursting from our instruments, as if the earth itself were sharing the stage with us. That this creative partnership is, like all ecosystems everywhere, fragile, threatened, vulnerable to attack, is not news. The question we face, every day, is what can we do about it? As artists we have one avenue open to us, one abiding responsibility, one great privilege: to bear witness. Not to preach or harangue or point fingers, but simply to listen, to hear and feel the earth’s great turning made manifest as music, and thereby to be reminded that it is us and we are it: no separation, nowhere to hide. Music has always channeled the earth’s power, whether explicitly, as in the prelude to Haydn’s Creation, or implicitly, as in Beethoven’s Fifth. In its cyclical rhythmic pulsing, its weather patterns of fast- or slow-moving harmonies, its cresting and ebbing of sound, it makes the interlacing of forces and systems that drive life itself audible to us in a direct experience of beauty, majesty and, sometimes, terror. We have it all this summer, from the almost intoxicating magic of John Luther Adams’ Canticles of the Sky, to the Hunt Quartet of Mozart, to Juba, Trevor Weston’s rumination on the importance of land, of growing and harvesting, to African-American culture and legacy. We invite you all to join us, to listen with us, to Become Music with us.

Love,
Andy & Carrie

Our Mission

We engage the public of the Catskills and the Upper Delaware region directly by bringing transformative performances of, and discussion around, chamber music to a wide variety of venues across the region. With events each season in a converted barn (our main concert home); a distillery; a country inn; a farmer’s market; a church lawn; a repurposed school; and an old mill-turned-gallery, we bring our work straight to the people wherever they are. Our commitment to what we see as an essential mix of standard repertoire, new music, encounters with living composers, and improvisation, ensures that our audiences come to see chamber music as a vital, contemporary, evolving art form, one that speaks directly to them, of their lives and their shared humanity.

THE CONCERTS

2024 brings a summer of reckoning with, indulging in, and celebrating our planet, its beauty and fragility, and our fraught relationship to it. We’ll share in music that conjures a sense of place, of environment, and of the mystery and majesty of the natural world. Featuring works by John Luther Adams, in whose gorgeous soundscapes nature becomes audible (our title for the summer is a pun on his orchestral masterwork, Become Ocean), as well as music of Carter; Debussy; Faure; Mozart; the premiere of Andrew Waggoner’s love letter to New Orleans and coastal Louisiana, Lovely, Lost…; and Trevor Weston’s celebration of land, legacy and culture, Juba. All this, and an improvised score to the beloved but problematic classic film Nanook of the North. Come to listen, to feel, to be absorbed into the great whole. Become Music.

July 18th at 7:30PM

The enchanted flute of guest artist Carol Wincenc is at the center of this program of short, intimate works arising from the earth, just like us…

Lulu’s Social Club,
Jeffersonville Bake Shop
7:30 PM

July 19th at 7PM

Join WCM artists for rehearsal and discussion on works from our July 20th program, Water, Land, Life.

Catskill Art Space
48 Main Street
Livingston Manor, NY

July 20th at 8PM

Earth, water, shifting weather patterns and the Arctic stars all resound through this program of works that move with the planet.

July 21st at 4PM

WCM artists return to the Liberty Museum for an unpredictable program of solos, duos and improvisations, with music drawn from the 2024 season ringing with echoes of water, climate, and the wonder of the planet.

Liberty Museum and Art Center
46 South Main Street
Liberty, NY

July 25 at 730PM

It’s the return of movie night! Earth becomes music in the form of two visionary piano works of John Luther Adams book-ending an all-improvised score for the beloved classic Nanook of the North.

Catskill Art Space
48 Main Street
Livingston Manor, NY

July 26th at 7PM

Our second open rehearsal of the season! Come for a preview and discussion of works from our July 27th concert, Become Music.

Eddie Adams Barn
Jeffersonville/North Branch rd.
Jeffersonville, NY

July 27 at 8PM

Three works rooted in the earth: Trevor Weston’s celebration of land, legacy and culture, Juba; the Hunt quartet of Mozart, brimming with joy and rocking every 18th century musical code for the rustic and pastoral; and the astonishing 1st quartet of Elliott Carter, music arising from a watershed year composing in the Southwest desert.

Eddie Adams Barn
Jeffersonville/North Branch rd.
Jeffersonville, NY