iPutney Calendar

Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) will replace the deck of the US Route 5 bridge in Putney Center at intersection of Kimball Hill Road starting in Spring 2020. Join the project team for a presentation about next steps and construction plans.
Bring your comments and questions!

Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present The Suitcase Junket – Matt Lorenz’s internationally touring, throat-singing, slide guitar playing one-man band – plus rock/folk/country/blues band Kate Lorenz and The Constellations at Next Stage on Friday, November 15 at 7:30 pm.

With warmth, wildness, unkempt vitality and sharply imaginative musicality, The Suitcase Junket works the border of Americana and rock, with image-driven songwriting, idiosyncratic storytelling and effusive vocal presence. Artist, tinkerer, swamp yankee, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matt Lorenz draws from a fantastically patchwork sonic palette, shaping his songs with elements of jangly folk, fuzzed-out blues, oddly textured psych-rock and dance-hall festivity. From the salvaged sounds of American juke joints, back porches, honky tonks and rock clubs, his road-worn voice rises over instruments built of broken bottles, thrift store forks, dried bones, gas cans, shoes, saw blades, a toy keyboard, salvaged instruments and an overhead compartment’s worth of luggage. Despite being deeply attuned to the chaos of the world, Lorenz brings joyful wonder to his music and makes an undeniable case for infinite curiosity as a potent antidote to jadedness and despair.

Growing up in Cavendish, VT, Lorenz began playing piano at age five, learned to sing by copying his sister Kate and later took up violin, saxophone and guitar. While studying music and adaptive instrument design at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, he taught himself to throat sing and on graduation moving day, retrieved a worn, mold-filled guitar from a dorm dumpster. He fixed it up, started pulling songs out of it and spent the next year playing music on the streets of Europe. That was the beginning, and since then The Suitcase Junket has built a powerful fan base in his native New England and far beyond, performing at festivals including Mountain Jam, FloydFest, FreshGrass, Green River Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrsas, Joshua Tree and Winnipeg Folk. His seventh and latest CD is “Mean Dog, Trampoline.”

“a lo-fi, low-tuned, low-down blast of end-times folk blues. It’s crude; it’s magnificent… The Suitcase Junket – one man band leader Matt Lorenz – incants and intones… Captivating, mesmerizing, and gone… real gone” – Rochester City Newspaper

Kate Lorenz and The Constellations features Kate (vocals,guitar) Ben Falkoff (guitar), Max Adam (vocals, bass) and Don McAulay (drums). While studying abroad, Kate began performing with a pub band in Ireland, and then formed the folk-rock quartet Rusty Belle with her brother Matt, Zak Trojano and Jazer Giles in 2006. At home singing everything from gritty electric soul to tender country blues, she has added her harmonies to records by Chris Smither, Jeffrey Foucault, Caitlin Canty, Hayward Williams and The Suitcase Junket.

Next Stage is located at 15 Kimball Hill in downtown Putney, VT. Tickets are $22 Advance / $25 At the Door. For information, call 802-387-0102. Advance tickets are available at www.nextstagearts.org, Turn It Up in Brattleboro and the Putney General Store in Putney. Next Stage will provide a beer and wine cash bar. For more information, visit www.thesuitcasejunket.com, www.katelorenzmusic.com, www.twilightmusic.org and www.nextstagearts.org.

Come out and join your fellow voters to watch the debate and discuss the candidates. Good company, good food, good drink, and the debate on a 16-foot screen.

The Brattleboro Women’s Chorus will present their 24th annual fall concert titled Love Changes Everything on Saturday, November 23 at 3:00 pm and 7:30 pm at the newly named Epsilon Spires, formerly the First Baptist Church, on Main Street.

Director Becky Graber and the 100-plus member chorus will be joined by guest musicians Lisa McCormick with her ukulele orchestra and Cathy Martin on piano.

The theme of the concert music is love in its many forms. By happenstance or by grace, many of the songs are by women composers: the concert title song Love Changes Everything by Lisa McCormick; two by Ali Burns of Scotland; Lullabye by Cris Williamson; the irreverent If You Love Me by Malvina Reynolds; and Holly Near’s Change of Heart, which says, among other things, “There’s a change of heart any time you join the choir.”

Baby Boomer favorites include Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, All I Have to Do Is Dream, Billy Joel’s Lullabye, and a medley of Beatles tunes. And for the younger crowd, there is One Day by Matisyahu.

Tickets are $12 adult, $20 generous, and $10 student and senior and will be available at BrownPaperTickets.com or at the door. For more information, see www.BrattleboroWomensChorus.org or call 802-254-8994.

Weekend, Putney Craft Tour Weekend
The 41st Annual Putney Craft Tour, the oldest continuing crafts tour in the country, is held during the long Thanksgiving weekend (Nov 29, Dec 1,10-5p), and gives shoppers, visitors and collectors another reason to be thankful. Glass blowers, potters, jewelers, weavers, painters, woodworkers, – even artisan cheesemakers, and winemakers– invite visitors to come in to their studios, discover, ask questions, sip hot cider and buy that one-of-a-kind gift direct from the artisan who made it. Part of the fun is meandering through the beautiful Vermont countryside, following the map to find these prominent craftspeople and view the works where they are conceived and created. Most studios do demos. The weekend is promoted as the “Putney Craft Tour’s Craft, Culinary and Performance Weekend” with wine and cheese tastings and performances at night at Next Stage and Sandglass Theatre. Location: Putney and Saxtons River, VT. Visitors may start at The Gleanery Restaurant, 133 Main Street, Putney for info, maps, and a preview exhibition of the artisans’ works. www.putneycrafts.com

Sandglass Theater presents When I Put On Your Glove
As part of the Thanksgiving Weekend Putney Craft Tour

On Friday and Saturday November 29th and 30th at 7:30 Sandglass Theater presents When I Put On Your Glove. This puppetry, dance and spoken word piece explores a daughter’s relationship to her father’s work building upon a premise that puppets are containers of memory. In it, a daughter explores what it means for her to slip into her father’s art – and not just the form, but the actual pieces. This work addresses universal questions of belonging and loss, and the complicated nature of navigating generational artistic legacy. The passing of these puppets into new hands marks a pivotal moment of generational transition for Sandglass Theater. It is an engagement with what legacy means in the field of puppetry; how an art form endures and transforms as it is handed to the next generation; meeting the voice of the past with the voice of the present, and singing it into the future.

7th Annual Crankie Celebration Week
Crankie Performance Weekend
Saturday, Dec 7 at 4 & 7:30PM
Sunday Dec 8 at 3PM
Special Event Katherine Fahey, The Lantern Sisters
Wednesday, Dec 11 7:30PM
Crankie Building Workshop with Ines Zeller Bass
Friday, December 13th thru Saturday, December 15th
This December Sandglass Theater brings you a celebration of the art of the crankie. A crankie, known in the 19th century as a moving panorama, is an old storytelling art form that has found new audiences and enthusiasts with performances and festivals across the country. This 7th Annual Crankie Celebration includes performances, a special event and a crankie building workshop. Experience the mystique and low-tech charm of pairing song and story with scrolling pictures.
The roster of artists at this year’s annual Crankie Performance Weeekend includes both old and new friends: Eric and Ines Zeller Bass with Julian Slone, Clare Dolan, Justin Dupont, Molly Gawler, Delia Robinson and Julia Vallimont. This dynamic collection of artists will share their work, poetry, song and magical cranking devices in the celebration of the storytelling medium that has become so popular across New England.
This year we are excited to add a special performance by The Lantern Sisters (Katherine Fahey and Dan Van Allen). These Baltimore puppeteers will be sharing nearly 10 years of Katherine’s work, featuring shadow puppet crankies based on stories and songs from their own streets of Baltimore to the swamps of Louisiana and the tundra of Northern Quebec!
The crankie building workshop, Telling Tales with Crankies, is taught by Ines Zeller Bass. Participants will build their own crankie including the scrolling mechanism and create and illustrate their own story.
The workshop is for people of all levels of experience, ages 18 and up at Sandglass Theater.

The Vermont Jazz Center 2019 Big Band Benefit Gala celebrates Nat King Cole’s centennial, with vocalist Peter Eldridge (Rob Freeberg, musical director). The concert supports the VJC Scholarship Program.

One of the greatest jazz vocalists and pianists, Grammy Hall of Famer Nat King Cole recorded over 150 Billboard singles, selling more than 50 million copies during his lifetime.

The pallbearers at his funeral included Robert F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Johnny Mathis and Sammy Davis Jr.

He was the first African American to host his own radio program (1946) and TV show (1956) in the US.

Performing Cole’s music,using big band arrangements prepared for Cole himself, is two-time Grammy winning vocalist Peter Eldridge.

Eldridge has performed in preeminent venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and the Kennedy Center.

His original music has been covered by artists such as Nancy Wilson, Paquito D’Rivera, and Jane Monheit.

Sponsored by Dianne and Steve Lieberman

$20-40 general, $15 student- available online, at door, reserved by phone & In The Moment Records, Brattleboro. $1 extra per CC ticket

802 254 9088
www.vtjazz.org
gingervjc@vtjazz.org

Vermont Jazz Center
74 Cotton Mill Hill #222
Brattleboro VT 05301