Jazz at Lincoln Center comes up the river to run a rigorous training institute for 42 of the world’s most advanced and dedicated high school jazz students. This two-week program is taught by Wynton Marsalis and a select faculty of musical heavyweights, and if you act fast, you can hear them play.
Next two weekends: On the surface, The Skin of Our Teeth couldn’t seem more different from the Thornton Wilder piece that everybody knows: the universally produced Our Town. It was written as a spark of absurd hope amidst the despair of World War II, but takes on new layers of meaning whenever troubled times roll around.
Through July 23: Downtown Manhattan’s longest-running and most accomplished experimental theater ensemble pays a 100th-birthday tribute to the trailblazing “Theater of Death” director Tadeusz Kantor.
July 13-16: Every summer, the venerable festival showcases the full spectrum of American bluegrass and folk: the old and the new, the traditional and the progressive, unknowns and certified national treasures with last names that strike awe.
Saturday-Sunday, July 15-16: The vinegarmaking at Our Lady of the Resurrection began four decades ago, when the monastery’s founder, Benedictine monk Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, came across a vinegar recipe dating to the Middle Ages.
Thursday, July 13: Curling for Amateurs is a highly skilled core band accompanied by Jones’ Hocket Workshop. Various sets of instruments – end-blown wooden organ pipes, pitched wood blocks, PVC tubes, bottles and the human voice – are played hocket-style, in which each person plays or sings a single note, which, in collaboration with others, creates melody and rhythm.
Sunday, July 16: This ensemble is widely considered to be one of the best in contemporary Latin music.
Starting Saturday, July 8 and continuing through the month, the Film Festival will be screening independent films Saturday evenings at Upstate Films on Tinker Street. The series will culminate in a benefit concert for the Festival by the Paul Green Rock Academy on Saturday, July 29 at The Lodge.
Tents shielding vendors from the summer sun line both sides of Church Street, with a narrow aisle between in which a constant stream of people walk back and forth. As they move from one booth to the next, visitors to the New Paltz Open Air Market, now in its third week, are clearly pleased by what might be described as the old farmer’s market on steroids.
There were so many openings last weekend — a total of 18 — it was impossible to see them all. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that so much of the art was worthy of contemplation. On the positive side, the rich snippet of paintings, collages, photographs and sculptures I managed to view attest to the city’s vibrant art scene.