Play Every TownAfter the concert, Williston resident Steve Hornibrook shared his experience playing with Eubie Blake in a hotel lounge. And his grandfather Robert Reed played with Scott Joplin! Family lore has it that Reed, a music professor, notated the Maple Leaf Rag. While this seems questionable—Joplin was in his thirties when the rag was published, and had had piano tutelage from conservatory-trained Julius Weiss back in his teens—it is not impossible. Joplin did enroll at George R. Smith College to develop his knowledge after having published what would become the all-time best-selling rag. I've reached out to Joplin expert Ed Berlin to get his take on this and will update when I hear back.
Williston
Concert Seventy-Six: 2/23/25 at the Williston Federated Church
...donations benefited 350Vermont
click any image to enlarge
prelude
To most people in NW Vermont, Williston means big-box retail. Williston’s Tafts Corners is home to the Maple Tree Place mall and the state’s first Walmart Supercenter, whose opening in 1997 capped over a decade of local opposition and more than 20 years of debate about siting big retail in this one-time hayfield 7 miles east of downtown Burlington. (It also marked the end of Vermont’s status as the only state without a Supercenter.) The controversy was an early test of Vermont’s landmark 1970 development and land use law, Act 250, which has been enormously impactful in preserving Vermont’s bucolic character, making it a more attractive place to visit and to live…while simultaneously making it harder to build places to do that. (Vermont has the second-highest homelessness rate in the country and the lowest proportion of households—just 8%—who can afford the median-priced home, though this problem has causes besides just controlled development.)
One thing Act 250 does is require every town to create a plan that stipulates the scope and specific locations for various types of development, which allows towns to define what can be built where, and much of Williston remains rural and even antique. Just a couple of miles up the road from Taft Corners, you enter Williston village, with the town’s oldest church (1832), library, middle school, and houses built mostly in the mid-19th century. And just a bit NE of the village is the home of Williston’s first resident and Vermont’s first governor, Thomas Chittenden, looking today much as it did when it was rebuilt in 1796. Continue past on Governor Chittenden Road (closed in winter) and you come to a bend where Riverhill Farm, an organic dairy and sugaring operation, looks over a stunning pastoral vista of the Winooski basin—a wormhole to a past time standing in mind-boggling contrast to the Walmart five miles down the road.
the venue
Which is to say, the Play Every Town concert at the 1869 Federated Church in historic Williston Village was in a quaint corner of the town most shoppers will never see.
(trusty EV in foreground)
(The third pic above comes from this beautiful sequence by photographer Stephen Mease.) The church contains a number of representations of itself from over the years:
The last two representations above are by Nancy Stone, who was present at the concert. Nancy completed her own artistic Vermont 251 project, self-publishing 251 Vermont Vistas, a set of hand-painted postcards of every Vermont town. All three editions are now sold out, but you can see some tantalizing samples on her website.
The church lies at the midpoint between Vermont’s oldest politician’s landmark, the Chittenden homestead on Gov. Chittenden Road, and its coolest:
the concert
Music director Adam Hall, onetime colleague of mine at UVM (and editor of area satire periodical The Winooski) reached out to me about playing at the church, at Eric Fellinger’s suggestion (see “about the piano”, below). Adam is a wonderful tenor and agreed to collaborate with me, as did my onetime student Grace Hain, a fabulous soprano, now vocal music teacher at Stowe High School and living in Williston. The audience of about 120 gave very generously to 350Vermont; Kim Hornung-Marcy, daughter of the piano donors (see below), who retired from pastoral ministry in 2020 to focus on climate change activism, spoke eloquently to the organization’s work in climate mitigation and adaptation. Ryan Garvey was present to record the concert for a feature in an upcoming edition of the Bernie Buzz. Sen. Sanders’ constituent newsletter. (I’ll add a link here when it appears.)
The program included Haydn’s stormy Sonata in E minor, composed ca. 1778, the year Thomas Chittenden was first elected governor. (That’s him in the program, as portrayed in the statue outside Williston’s Dorothy Alling Memorial Library. Our homeschooled kids spent half their waking hours there when we lived around the corner during our first five years in Vermont.) There were Chopin mazurkas from 1832, the year the Old Brick Church was built, which was where the Congregationalists gathered before federating with the Methodists in 1899—which I also celebrated with two pieces composed that year, the Charleston Rag and Vermont’s unofficial state rag, the Maple Leaf.
...about the piano
When I first inquired a few years ago about playing in Williston, there was no acoustic piano at the church, and I had written it off as a venue. But luckily Eric Fellinger, a recent follower of the project, originally of Williston, told me that there was in fact a fine modern Steinway baby grand in the sanctuary, recently donated by Jed and Jini Hornung. Church pianist Suiong Wong and her husband, in appreciation of this excellent instrument, donated the piano trolley it sits on.
Maintained by Allan Day and more recently by his former apprentice Cameron Steinmetz, serial no. 508197 (1989) was in beautiful condition, with a lovely tone that is still on the gentle side even at 36 years, typical of a piano getting moderate use in a private home, its hammers not yet fully “played in”. Play Every Town no. 76, in fact, marked the first standalone concert on the piano in its new home.
more about Act 250 & Williston
Here are some cool links about Williston development and Act 250:
• Illustrated history (maps)
of Williston’s planning and development, 1975-2011
• Brief overview
of Williston’s modern development controversy, 1975-2022
• “The Man Who Malled Williston”
(Seven Days article published towards the end of the original controversy)
• Brave Little State podcasts
on the history of Act 250
Comments (2)
Kimberly HornungMarcy
March 17th, 2025 9:01pm
Many thanks to the musicians who gave us wonderful music and to everyone who came. It was so great to see the church full for such a fun event.
Gary Irish
March 17th, 2025 4:32pm
One minor point - I believe Williston's Walmart was Vermont's first Walmart, but it is not a Supercenter. Just a "regular" Walmart. But another wonderful concert, in a venue that, until then, I had only seen the steeple, not the sanctuary - they gave tours of the steeple before the first restoration, perhaps 25 years ago.