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

Artistic Directors’ Message

The Great Tradition! Wow, that rings with all kinds of portent: a canon, a shared history, a legacy, the masterpieces of common practice. We’re interested in all of that, but even more in looking forward and seeing that tradition extended, re-heard, reimagined and remade. This summer’s program is anchored by the cornerstone presences of Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, and Schumann. The conversation then broadens to include twentieth-century masters Duke Ellington, Alberto Ginastera and Michael Tippett, each of whom looks back to their forebears while also anticipating the contemporary voices of Morris Rosenzweig, and this year’s composer in residence Augusta Read Thomas. Running parallel to all this is salon music both old and new, composed and improvised. It’s a multi-generational colloquy, a three-hundred year family reunion. We love tradition, especially ours of 32 years: hearing the old in the new, the new in the old, and the wondrous in everything.

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.