Andy Lee Field in Woodstock will be dressed with hundreds of balloons and three tents as locals gather on Saturday, August 17, with lunch served from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the adjoining Mescal Hornbeck Community Center. Music will start at 2:15 p.m., headlined by The Cupcakes, and will move outside to the field at 7 p.m. for Rennie Cantine’s Woodstock Guitar Festival, leading up to the 9 p.m. (or so) grand fireworks display.
Investigators from at least three police agencies were searching a wooded area off of the Thruway Exit 19 traffic circle Monday afternoon after a body was discovered there Sunday evening.
Deliberations over the former Woodstock Lodge continued last week.
Saturday, Aug. 10: While the focus this year is on the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, what gets lost in the shuffle is the struggle the town of Woodstock endured in dealing with an influx of people after the music was over.
Last week a notice appeared on the bulletin board of the Woodstock Library concerning The Bear Café, which has been closed most of this year, along with the nearby Bearsville Theater and Peterson House, most recently known as Commune Saloon.
Remember the artists? In this year of anniversaries ending in zeros, it’s vastly important to look at the history of Woodstock’s art colony and find the connections that take us back to the rural town that became a haven for the denizens of the brush, the painters, sculptors, the creators of the beauty of the visual, made from almost anything, fine pen and inks, oils, rock ledges, large chunks of bluestone, canvas, fabrics, wood… Calvin Grimm is one such connection.
The Gilded Carriage, a longtime fixture of Woodstock for fine kitchen and housewares, is celebrating its 60th year. Owner Marina Basil says the store, which her mother, Mari Basil, opened in 1959, holds much more than six decades of Woodstock history within its walls; it also contains the memory and legacy of her mother, father, and sister.
The 88th Annual Woodstock Library Fair was not without its drama this year when a group opposed to a planned new building displayed their own alternatives and criticisms.
Reviews of some recent local classical musical performances, plus a look forward.
Maria Todaro, co-founder and executive director of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, has set Donizetti’s opera The Elixir of Love in an African village for the 2019 festival, which will be held Friday, August 2, to Sunday, August 4. This choice led to the theme of African-American artists and music that weaves through a number of this year’s events, including a performance of selections from a historic ragtime-influenced opera, Treemonisha, by composer Scott Joplin.