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252 Community Concerts for a Cooler Climate

Hartland

Concert Number Eighty: April 19, 2025 at Damon Hall

...donations benefited the Vermont Flood Response & Recovery Fund

click any image to enlarge

special note:
Mohsen Mahdawi and the American Revolution quarter-millenial

Originally scheduled for late March, the Hartland concert was postponed due to a late wintry storm. The rescheduling turned out to be powerfully fortuitous: the concert took place on April 19, the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

Columbia student and legal permanent resident Mohsen Mahdawi had been kidnapped by ICE agents just days before at a sham citizenship interview appointment. He is now being held in violation of his first amendment rights. To our surprise, when we arrived at the hall Saturday, we learned that he attends the Unitarian Universalist church in Hartland. The evening before our concert, a solidarity meeting at the church was attended by over 300 people, where (we were told) “the fear was palpable”.

In response, we added a spontaneous rendition of a classic Woody Guthrie song. As far as I could tell, every one of the 85 souls in attendance was singing along. There are so many more of us than there are of them!

All You Fascists Bound to Lose
overview of the audience
a hallful of non-fascists

...back to our regularly scheduled concert report

Pierre Fournier, Rebecca Wood, and Chiho Kaneko of Hartland Community Arts invited me to play in Damon Hall, “an unusually sophisticated example of Colonial Revival architecture for what was, at the time of its construction, a small community of limited means” (Wikipedia) that was built to serve as both municipal Town Hall and community performance center.

Damon Hall photo
Damon Hall
Damon Hall painting
a more fanciful and schematic view
a house with activist signs painted all over
a nearby outspoken house

I was excited for the opportunity to collaborate with Hartland native Rebecca, my student at UVM about 15 years ago, now teaching music in the Windsor public schools, and with Chiho.

Damon Hall photo
Rebecca sang Ives
Damon Hall painting
Chiho sang Schubert & Mahler
a house with activist signs painted all over
Chiho fills in Hartland

I also played solo pieces from the years Damon Hall was being built and my own “Stride Rite”, written the year the hall’s excellent Yamaha C2 was manufactured. And the program included Liszt’s celebration of democracy and resistance to tyranny, “The Chapel of William Tell”—a piece that has crept onto many of my programs recently.

Ives “Feldeinsamkeit”
(go to YouTube for lyrics)
a house with activist signs painted all over
the program
Scarlatti Sonata in G Major K.80

Hartland’s main village presents as a cheery, progressive, opinionated town center. Several of the project’s “groupies” sent these photos from the Hartland Diner, which (besides preparing fresh local food and killer pie) boasts that its mission is to provide a meeting place and “Justice and Inclusion and Fair Wages paid for Honest Work in a safe and empowering workplace and The Vibe.” Even the unassuming Mobil convenience store had something we hadn’t seen in 17 years living in the country’s top maple producing state.

Damon Hall photo
PET stalwart Dick Colletti with fellow physician Dr. Fauci
Damon Hall painting
PET stalwart Clara Eden (also a doctor) with Bernie
a house with activist signs painted all over
on the menu: the Rule of Law
a house with activist signs painted all over
serious syrup dispenser at the Mobil station

...about the piano

Yamaha C2 no. 6046499 was manufactured in Hamamatsu in 2003 and is nicely maintained. It had a stereotypical Yamaha sound, crisp, bright and bell-like, and very even across registers. The C2 is the second smallest of Yamaha’s “conservatory” grand line; at 5’8” it does a remarkable job of approaching the harmonic richness and full bass sound of larger pianos.

A Hartland Community Arts fundraising campaign led by Richard Waddell and Pierre Fournier made possible the purchase from Frederick Johnson Pianos; Dick Johnson, one of the owners, is a Hartland resident, and gave HCA a community discount. on the purchase price. Hartland Community Arts maintains and insures the piano.

Kawai serial no. 2271106 piano

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