Category: Art & Theater

Colby-Sawyer showcases Italian program

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

Every year for more than two decades, students from Colby-Sawyer College in New London head to Italy for a semester at the Florence School of Fine Arts. The city serves as the study abroad program’s laboratory and studio. For the first time, an upcoming exhibition will show some of their works, along with those of the artists who run the school.

“Florence is filled with antiquities, art objects, museums and cathedrals; it’s very inspiring,” Jon Keenan, a professor who also runs the Davidow Fine Art Gallery at Colby-Sawyer, said in a recent phone interview. “These students are translating their experience of their studies there, and we’re able to exhibit it.”

Keenan got the idea during a visit last year with Florence School of Fine Arts founder Melania Lanzini, and photographer Charles Loverme, Lanzini’s husband, who runs the school with her. “I’ve been working with them pretty much since they started up,” he said. “We were saying, ‘We should have an exhibition, to highlight and celebrate our relationship.’”

Lanzini and Loverme will both display works.

“Melania does a lot of lithography and collage work,” Keenan said. “She’s combining both traditional and contemporary approaches, working with some found objects, as well as depicting scenes in and around Florence and the area that they live in.”

In an artist statement, Loverme described the work he’ll bring to the exhibit: “For the past two decades, Italy has been both my home and my muse. Living in the historic center of Florence for 20 years, and now amidst the rolling hills of Chianti, I’ve found inspiration in the juxtaposition of city and countryside. This series explores these contrasting worlds.”

His black and white images primarily capture what Loverme calls “the timeless geometry of urban life, the interplay of light and shadow [that] highlights the city’s elegance,” while his color work focuses on rural subjects that “draw the eye to the small, overlooked details of the natural world — fallen leaves, scattered fruit, and the quiet poetry of decay.”

Representing Colby-Sawyer are Brian Cal-Mallo, who’s both a painter and photographer, printmaker Alex Jenkins, and Sota Morishita, a photographer. All are studio art and graphic design majors who studied in Florence during the summer program in 2024.

“Though varied in their chosen media, each artist shares common ground in finding inspiration in the contrasts of beauty in Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, and the Tuscan region,” Keenan said. “This exhibition reminds us not only that art is a joy to experience but also a universal language and a vibrant expression of our shared humanity.”

The exhibit will open on Jan. 30 with the three student artists in attendance.

“We always do a nice reception to celebrate the audience and create community through the arts,” Keenan said. “We’re going to have lots of great food and beverages.”

It runs through April 2, and Loverme will visit on the final day for a meet and greet, and to discuss his work.

Funded by William H. and Sonja Carlson Davidow, the latter a 1956 Colby-Sawyer graduate, the gallery opened six years ago. Keenan was involved in the conception and execution of the state-of-the-art facility where it resides, which also has a black box theater and multiple facilities for students to create in.

It sits amidst natural beauty, with Mt. Kearsarge in view, and Keenan hosts six events a year in the gallery.

“My goal is to create community, bring people together through the arts,” he said. “This venue is the ideal place to do that — to provide learning for the public, and to support the arts. Whatever we can do to keep it happening is our privilege.”

Opening Reception: The Florence School of Fine Arts & Colby-Sawyer College Art Project

When: Thursday, Jan. 30, 4-6 p.m.
Where: Davidow Fine Art Gallery, 541 Main St., New London
More: colby-sawyer.edu

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Music school series begins with contradance

By Michael Witthaus

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An evening devoted to a centuries-long American folk music tradition will launch a series of public events from Concord Community Music School dubbed New England Roots & Branches. Contradance Music: The New England Contradance Repertoire will include a community jam session followed by a contradance called by a veteran and scholar of the style.

David Millstone began attending contradances soon after moving to New Hampshire’s Upper Valley in the early 1970s. Within a couple of years he was regularly attending dances led by Dudley Laufman. Millstone called Laufman the most influential figure in spreading contradancing across America and especially in New England.

“People would refer to Dudley dances,” Millstone said by phone recently. “He was a charismatic individual, and he was calling essentially every night from Maine to Connecticut back in the day. Other callers got interested, other musicians started playing, and the whole scene … really took off.”

Millstone was one of those inspired by Laufman; he began calling in the mid-’70s, and 50 years on he’s doing it still, in addition to writing books and album liner notes and making movies about contradance. As a caller he becomes an integral part of the band, and at the Jan. 25 event he’ll be working with four leading lights of New England acoustic music.

Guitarist Dan Faiella will accompany fiddlers Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki, Audrey Budington and Liz Faiella, who organized the series. She’s excited to have Millstone calling.

“My brother and I’ve worked with him through the years, and I used to go to his country dances,” Liz Faiella recalled in a recent phone interview. “He’s great at working with absolute beginners and really advanced dancers, getting everyone on the floor dancing comfortably and enjoying themselves.”

In 2015 Liz received a New Hampshire Arts Council grant to explore contradancing across the state. “I got to bop around, visit all of these different contradances, talk to the people who organized them and get a sense of the history,” she said. “I came away with a sense of how central it was to people’s lives here.”

As a musician she’s also impressed by the many tributaries joined together to make New England’s contradancing scene unique. “There’s stuff from Ireland, England, coming from Cape Breton, and we’ve got Quebecois music coming down here,” she said. “We’ve also got music from Appalachia, that sort of thing, and it’s all been integrated into this really rich contradance music tradition.”

All the band members are part of Concord Community Music School’s folk department.

“It really is a dream team; I can’t believe I get to work with these guys,” Liz said. “We all have been immersed in this scene and yet have our own takes on it. So it was kind of an opportunity to do some of what we do best, in sort of disentangling some of the genres.”

Beginning with a dance was the logical way to kick off the series, she continued. “We’re sort of starting out with ‘OK, here’s what we experience … this convergence of all of these different styles.’ Then, let’s pick that apart a little bit, and in the next few concerts, we’re going to celebrate different places that that music comes from.”

On Saturday, April 5, Transatlantic Tunes: Celtic & British Isles Folk Tunes celebrates music from the United Kingdom that became part of New England’s folk repertoire, and Music From North & South: Canadian & Appalachian Folk Tunes finishes the series on Friday, June 13.

Don’t fret about fitting in at the upcoming event, cautions David Millstone.

“If you can walk, you can do these dances,” he said, and welcoming newbies is a hallmark. “Experienced dancers will go up, say hello and invite people to dance, because that’s how we all learned how to do this. You don’t go to class for eight or 10 weeks … you learn it on the fly.”

Contradance Music: The New England Contradance Repertoire
When: Saturday, Jan. 25, 6 p.m.
Where: City Wide Community Center, 14 Canterbury Road, Concord
More: ccmusicschool.org/event/ne-roots-and-branches-1

Featured photo: Liz & Dan Faiella. Photo by Elizabeth Frantz.

Piano Men (and women) opens at Palace

By Michael Witthaus
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An upcoming Palace Theatre production is more a musical canvas than a show, and it’s one that Director Carl Rajotte has painted before. Piano Men was first presented as The Four Piano Men in 2011. Conceived, written and choreographed by Rajotte, it featured songs from Elton John, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Queen, via frontman Freddie Mercury.
Since then it’s changed and evolved, with Ray Charles and Phil Collins among the ivory tinklers tributed in the show, last done in 2023. Act 1 in this year’s production spotlights old-time rock ’n’ rollers Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, then pivots to Barry Manilow. Subsequent acts focus on the original four and two women, Carole King and Lady Gaga.
The female roles will be played by the director’s sister, Michelle Rajotte, a Palace regular.
“It’s funny too, because I did a Gaga section a long time ago, maybe 2012, in a show called Royalty of Rock and Pop,” Carl Rajotte said by phone during a break from rehearsals. “She did Gaga and just fell in love with her back then.”
The actor and musician playing the Billy Joel role has a lot of experience. John Abrams performed as Joel in the national tour of the jukebox musical Movin’ Out. Abrams will also cover the Elton John material. Another Palace veteran, GE Enrique, is playing both the Stevie Wonder and Freddie Mercury roles, along with serving as the show’s Music Director.
This will be the sixth time that the Palace has done Piano Men in some form; Enrique has worked on three.
What keeps Rajotte returning to the show? “I’ve fallen in love with all these artists that we have on stage because they’re good at telling a story,” he said, “which lends itself to theater. There are lots of times in the show when it’s just the piano and the band, but we have seven talented dancers, and they tell a story through dance throughout the whole night.”
The dance ensemble includes three men and four women. Andy Kastrati was in the Palace’s recent production of Dancing Queens, as was Savannah Enoch. Julia Grubbs, who danced in Piano Men in 2020, is a CPA by day — “she can shimmy and do your taxes,” quipped Rajotte — and Rachel Muhleisen is featured on Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely.” Peter Murphy and Annie Wogisch round out the hoofers.
With women having a moment in the musical world — Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Beyonce and others are dominating — Rajotte is pleased that the show is now piano men and women. “I’m really excited to bring the new stuff to the audience, the Carole King and the Gaga,” he said. “We were just finishing up Carole King’s section today. It’s just so fun to just go back to the ’60s, find that retro feel and put it on our video wall.”
He’s also happy with the current season, which will continue with Jimmy Buffett’s Escape to Margaritaville on Feb. 28 followed by Jesus Christ Superstar in late April. 2024/25’s final production, A Chorus Line, runs from May 30 to June 22.
“It’s about halfway done, and I feel like I just started,” Rajotte exclaimed in disbelief.
Perennial favorite A Christmas Carol was extended to the end of the month, a successful experiment that will probably be repeated next year. Rajotte ran the lighting board for that final weekend so his stage manager could be home for the holiday. At the end of the show Palace CEO Peter Ramsey reminded him that the season was at a midpoint.
“That hit me like a brick wall,” he said, “But, yeah, I feel like it’s been a really good season so far. Oliver was a wonderful artistic piece that we were able to bring to the stage, and Jersey Boys was a crowd-pleaser, with great music. A Christmas Carol is our tradition that everyone loves, and it was attended really great the whole run.”

Piano Men
When: Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2
& 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through
Feb. 9, and Thursday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St.,
Manchester
Tickets: $35 and up at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Piano Men. Photo by Jeff Shaw.

Relax and create at Art Escape

Here’s an idea for a first date: Break some glass. Then gather it up and fuse it into a work of art. It’s a great way to loosen up and find a creative impulse. That’s the idea at Art Escape, a Laconia walk-in studio offering everything from shattered glass and glass-blowing classes to working a pottery wheel, clay sculpture, ceramics and splatter painting.

Inviting your Bumble match to spin a clay bowl or paint and fire a ceramic fish not only has happened at Art Escape, but one such meetup led to an in-studio marriage proposal, owner Jean Cox recalled recently. Not only that; the couple later returned to celebrate their anniversary.

“This was his date’s favorite place to go,” she said. “He set it up with us ahead of time, so when she was in a paint class he walked in and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ We got it on video, it was very cool. Then they came back a year later to say, ‘Hey, we’re still married here.’”

Making art and memories is Art Escape’s mission. Cox and her husband, both Air Force veterans, opened a location near Laconia High School in 2007, and moved to Union Avenue 10 years later. The couple wanted a family-friendly studio for artistic creation, as existing spaces catered primarily to adults.

It’s become an intergenerational bridge, much to Cox’s delight.

“I’ve got a grandmother painting with her two grandkids right now,” she said. “It’s a way not only to spend time with the family, but one of the kids has a little ceramic axolotl she’s painting. Ten years from now they’ll look at it and remember doing it with their grandmother.”

Another popular attraction at Art Escape is the Splatter Room, where customers put on ponchos and shoe covers, then get their colors and a paint blaster with cups of paint. They stick the blaster in the cup, suck it up and spray it, not always aiming at a canvas. Jackson Pollock would likely be shocked, but it’s a great place to let off steam.

“You’re painting either a canvas or a shirt,” Cox said. “You literally throw paint at each other, or you throw paint at the canvas. It’s almost like family therapy if you come in with your kids … I mean, who doesn’t want to throw paint at their parents?”

When it debuted, Cox brought her two young sons in to test it out. “My son took a whole bottle of paint and threw it at me, and I was like, oh, this is how it’s going to go. We’re in there for I don’t know how long, and next thing you know, he’s like, ‘Gosh, mom, we never decorated our canvas.’ I’m like, ‘Well, let’s throw some paint on that.’”

It’s also a fun place for adults to unwind. Customers are allowed to bring food and beverages.

“Sometimes it’s a group of girls that just needs time off, since they work all week long. They just come in and hang out and bring wine. I had a group of them the other day. They brought a little charcuterie board, and wine, and stuff like that,” Cox said.

One thing it isn’t is a place for serious artists to work toward having a gallery someday.

“It’s not like fine art, it’s fun art, it’s a place to come with your grandkids or your girlfriends,” Cox said, while stressing that some of the higher-level classes that may seem daunting are surprisingly accessible.

“Everybody walks in thinking, I can’t do this, my project’s not going to look like hers, and when they leave, half the time, they’re better than mine,” she said. “They can customize them, and the projects come out so amazing. It’s nice that they’re going home with something that they can be proud of.”n front of a piece of artwork and whether you love it, or you don’t get it, or you hate it, you still have an opinion about it. It’s really interesting to me that people can get together and celebrate each other, discuss artwork, see where those ideas would come from. Part of my fun and part of my joy is making a space that’s really approachable and that is very welcoming…. So as much as it’s an experiment to showcase the artist, I also want to make sure that the patrons feel really supported and want to come in and check out and see what’s going on at See Saw,” Regan said.

Art Escape
Where: 636 Union Ave., Laconia
More: artescape.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.