It was standing room only at the Cultural Arts Coalition’s annual New Year’s Day Concert for Peace, with the musicians gladly giving up their chairs so more audience members could be seated!
The 2:00 PM event at the Studio Around the Corner began with cellist and guitarist, Eliot Bailen, leading the audience in a sing-along of the Beatles hit, Across the Universe, followed by the Cultural Arts Coalition’s President, Judy Marano, reading Resilience, by Jack Kornfield.
Chamber music for flute and strings was featured, including Mozart’s elegant and buoyant Quartet in D major and Ginastera’s evocative Impresiones de la Puna, which transported listeners to the grassy plains high in the Andes Mountains. We were delighted to have the flutist, Susan Rotholz join us.
The theme of resilience was woven throughout, featuring works by Vivaldi, the Danish String Quartet, Cole Porter, Gershwin and selections from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s, The Sound of Music. Poems by Whittier, Henley, and Norton were read by community members and Cultural Arts Coalition volunteers, Phyllis Polonkay, Alyson Denny, and Peter Budd.
The concert came to a close with another sing-along, Pete Seeger’s Turn! Turn! Turn! followed by Auld Lang Syne. It was indeed a joyful and peaceful New Year’s celebration, and a truly special way to begin 2019.
Concerts Around the Corner are made possible in part by the NYS Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NYS Legislature. In Putnam County, this grant program is administered and monitored by the Putnam Arts Council, Mahopac, NY.
Photo Credit: Laurie Rhodes
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