Friday, Oct. 18: The acclaimed late-night TV show host, standup comedian, best-selling children’s book author, corporate speaker, TV and movie voiceover artist, pioneering car builder and mechanic and philanthropist has earned the moniker “the hardest-working man in show business.”
Saturday/Sunday, Oct. 19/20: Besides being among the most revolutionary of 20th-century classical composers, John Cage was also an avid amateur mycologist. His interest in mushrooms was literally born out of hunger during the Depression, when he would take the specimens he’d foraged near his home in Carmel, California to the local library to see if they were edible. He spent much of the rest of his life collecting and studying fungi, even supplying upscale New York restaurants such as the Four Seasons with mushrooms he gathered in the local (reachable by subway) wild.
Saturday, Oct. 19: See the work of several indigenous artists in collaboration: singers, instrumentalists, dancers and choreographers. Witness traditional Native American dances as Louis Mofsie sings songs from the Haudenosaunee, Southwest and Plains peoples. Rob Mastrianni performs on both double flute and guitar. Matoaka Little Eagle plays indigenous instruments to accompany original songs by contemporary singer/songwriter Sherry Lee. Using a combination of traditional and modern dance, the featured piece Silent Echoes of Time, choreographed by Michael Taylor, depicts the traumatic wartime experiences and subsequent journey of healing of a Lenape Vietnam veteran, Alan Shooting Star, who dances the lead role himself.
Now, every town has its cool stuff, but some of these discoveries are mind-blowing. Did you know that the first stained-glass window commission undertaken by the William Morris Company for an American client, with panels designed by Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Morris himself, was the 1867 Vanderpoel Window that hangs in Saugerties’ Trinity Church?
“We’ve always admired this building. We spoke with the Masons, who were operating on a much smaller scale by then. We saw what it could be and took the risk.”
Renee Zellweger makes the connection between Judy Garland and her audience feel visceral and real. Their love, we see, is Garland’s ultimate addiction.
Friday-Sunday, October 11-13: If you have never been to an O+ before, be prepared for a revelation, a brief interval of civic transformation that will make you proud to be from around here.
Monks perform the sacred music of Tibet and create a sand mandala for the public at UPAC. In addition to the Sunday, October 13 performance, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day from Wednesday, October 9 through Saturday, October 12, the monks will create a sand mandala at UPAC. A translator will be on hand to answer questions, and the community will have the opportunity to engage in conversation with the monks while enjoying the ephemeral artwork they are creating.
Friday-Sunday, Oct. 11-13: Conceived by Manhattan-based interior designer Brad Ford, who weekends in Ulster County, and inspired by the local fairs he attended while growing up in Arkansas, Field and Supply: A Modern Makers’ Craft Fair got started in 2014, attracting notice from various high-end design publications.
Sunday, October 13: “Sustain Traditions” is the motto of the Ulster County Italian American Foundation, which hosts this festival of Italian cuisine, culture and music every year on the Kingston waterfront: a natural location for an Italian Festival, with over 150,000 Italian Americans in Ulster, Orange and Dutchess Counties.