Author: Michael Witthaus

Avaloch Farm hosts musical weekend

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Down a dirt road, nestled near what flatlanders would call a lake but Granite Staters know as a pond, is a sleepaway camp for creatives called Avaloch Farm Music Institute. It’s bucolic, with woods, meadows, corn fields and apple orchards, as well as, crucially, 34 soundproofed private guest suites for visionaries to work on their next masterpiece.

Alfred Tauber bought the property in the 1990s as a vacation home. A decade later, he met Deb Scher, and the two began work on a residency program that resembled MacDowell Colony in Peterborough but allowed space for interdisciplinary collaboration on new projects, Avaloch Executive and Artistic Director Ashley Bathgate explained recently.

“The idea was slightly different from MacDowell’s concept in that it was centered around ensembles and artists,” she said in a recent phone interview. “It meant that not just composers or a writer or a visual artist could come, but rather a string quartet or a 13-piece chamber orchestra, sometimes a soloist with a composer in tow.”

Bathgate is a cellist who first came to Avaloch a year after it opened in 2012, and she has returned many times to work on commissions with multiple composers. In 2022 she took over from previous Executive Director Scher and began growing a program that began as a summer getaway into something closer to year-round.

Avaloch now offers residencies seven out of 12 months. Along with an expanded program came facility improvements like the Concert Barn, which was completed in 2023.

“We’re finally able to have public concerts,” Bathgate said, like the upcoming concert from Tanjo & Crow on Aug. 29.

“Last year, they were artists-in-residence,” Bathgate said of the rootsy duo. “They’re going to be here for a week again, and then they’re going to do their EP release, which includes a song that they wrote at Avaloch. So we have all different kinds of shows now.”

A weekend of music continues Aug. 30, as Scott Kirby, Gabriel Donohue and Friends perform an in-house event. “Singer, songwriter, guitarist, storyteller, traveler and road warrior” Kirby grew up in Penacook and splits his time between Kittery, Maine, and Key West these days. Donahue is an Irish-born multi-instrumentalist who’s played with the Chieftains.

Finally, Bathgate will play a late morning concert featuring new works for solo cello and electronics following a Brunch & Bubbles event with apple picking after, weather permitting.

Bathgate’s work is informed by the eclectic mix of artists that come to Avaloch.

“Why I love this job is I also get to take the temperature and have a really broad view into what the younger generation considers contemporary art,” she said. “We had an eight-piece turntable ensemble that came two summers ago, and they were virtuosic in what they do.”

Graphic and digital visual artists have also come to Avaloch.

“We’ve had people who’ve done projection mapping in real time, where the visual component is improvised as the music is played,” Bathgate said. “I do some work with multi-tracking and live processing and electronics in my solo music, but I don’t have nearly the grasp or scope of some of these younger kids.”

Artistic diversity and cross-pollination of disciplines is important to Ashgate, whose resume includes 10 years with Bang on a Can All-Stars, who worked with members of Sonic Youth and Dirty Projectors.

“We were all over the map in terms of collaboration,” she said. “When I came here, that became very important for me to share.”

It makes for a unique on-campus vibe, Bathgate continued. “What makes Avaloch special and where you see that synergy is when you have different genres and people from different backgrounds all together, eating and spending time together, partaking and sharing in the different kinds of music that they’re making.”

This has produced many success stories, along with ventures like the Composers Conference, an 82-year-old institution hosted by Avaloch for the past two seasons, and New Music, New Communities, which pairs young composition fellows with a composer mentor and a performer who premiere a work that they write.

“We’ve had Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize winners, and Guggenheim fellows in residence.” Bathgate said. “Some of them have recorded albums in the pine practice cabin that’s nestled in the woods.There’s been a lot of interesting creation of art. They use the grounds and the fields and the apple orchard as much as they use the facilities and the practice cabins.”

Upcoming at Avaloch Farm Music Institute

When: Friday, Aug. 29, 7:30 p.m., Tanjo & Crow EP release concert; Saturday, Aug. 30, 7:30 p.m., Scott Kirby, Gabriel Donohue and Friends; and Sunday, Aug. 31, 9:30 a.m., Brunch & Bubbles with cellist Ashley Bathgate (11 a.m. concert)
Where: Avaloch Farm Music Institute, 16 Hardy Lane, Boscawen
Tickets: avalochfarmmusic.org

Actorsingers Second Stage presents Avenue Q

Since the mid-1950s, Nashua’s Actorsingers theater company has been a mainstay in the area’s cultural scene, performing classics like The Sound of Music, Cats and Beauty and the Beast. In 2005, a subsection of the organization called Second Stage was launched to present non-traditional works.

Among adventurous Second Stage shows have been Evil Dead: The Musical, Reefer Madness and The Wild Party.

“It’s a little bit more against the beaten track,” Christie Conticchio of Actorsingers said recently. “What they would like to call their fringe productions.”

Conticchio is directing the company’s latest effort, Avenue Q, opening Aug. 22. The Tony-winning musical takes a Sesame Street-ish tale and places it in a gritty Brooklyn where most of the principals can barely afford rent. Most struggle with the search for meaning; this is underscored in an early song, “It Sucks to Be Me,” where cast members compare their woes.

Avenue Q is driven by puppets representing onstage actors. There’s neighbors Princeton and Kate Monster (Will Sulahian, Zoë Vitalich), odd couple roommates Nicky and Rod (James Spinney, Chris Drury) and Trekkie Monster (B.C. Williams), who along with the Bad Idea Bears (Dara Brown, Elsa Gustafson) embodies the musical’s irreverence. (Despite the puppets, this isn’t a kids’ show. According to a disclaimer on the company’s website: “This show contains racism, homophobia, profanity, sexual themes, and other sensitive topics.”)

Apex, North Carolina, custom fabricator DreamLab Studio provided the puppetry, which also includes boss lady Mrs. T (Kayla Williams) and the vixen-ish Lucy (Caitlyn Reilly). DreamLab founder Kerry Falkanger deserves her own credit in the playbill, with characters that are amazing.

“My actors keep talking about how comfortable it is to use their puppets and to look at them … they’re so pleasing to the eye,” Conticchio said, while noting that the production is using “between 20 and 30 puppets of different heads, bodies…. You wouldn’t think that Princeton needed three costume changes, but he does.”

For expertise controlling them, she consulted Ro Gavin, whose eponymous theater company in Portsmouth did Avenue Q in a previous season. “They came for … an entire workshop with the cast,” she recalled. “We went through syllables, how to do hand stretches, upper body strength. They got a crash course in Puppetry 101, even how to make a puppet breathe.”

A team of eight operators handles the puppets, and unlike the original Broadway show, there is no cast doubling. This is a move consistent with Conticchio’s directorial vision.

“Getting them as in-depth of the storyline as possible” was key, she explained. “This ensemble is, from the beginning, on stage I’d say more time than some of the leads.”

Actorsingers’ mission begins with “the promotion and presentation … of good amateur stage entertainment primarily of a musical nature” with “assistance and encouragement of many people, regardless of age, race or creed, in the development of their stage talents and to express such of their talents as will contribute to successful stage productions.”

Auditions for the show attracted an embarrassment of riches. More than 60 community actors showed up, all apparently Avenue Q fans.

“Casting Kate was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do as a director,” Conticchio said. “Luckily, I have seven other people on the board to help me.”

Asked what the response said to her about the amateur theater community in New Hampshire, and in the southern region of the state specifically, Conticchio was full of praise. “Honestly, it levels up with anything else regional, if not Broadway; I was so impressed with the talent,” she said. “After every group, I was like, honestly, thank you for coming out and sharing your talents with us. This is not going to be an easy decision.”