Ogunquit Performing Arts

Capriccio - Paul Sullivan and Con Fullam
2018-09-08 14:30 (America/New_York) | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
TICKETS

SERIES TICKETS

Paul Sullivan has enjoyed a richly varied and distinguished career as a composer and a pianist. In his solo performances, he creates a relaxed and intimate feeling with his audience through his pleasant and quirky observations about music and life. His warm and inviting personality, coupled with his world-class musicianship, wins over new listeners immediately and usually makes them life-long fans.
Con Fullam is a most talented and accomplished wordsmith and songwriter, but it’s when he himself performs his music that the listener’s experience is most touching, whether his musical stories are wistful, joyous, loving, blue or hopeful. He is a powerful entertainer and guitarist.
Hearing either of them live in concert is a special occasion. But when they join forces, they create a musical event which is simply not to be missed. OPA is proud and fortunate to bring them together as a part of the Capriccio Music Festival.
As a soloist, with his trio, and as a member of the Paul Winter Consort, Paul Sullivan has played concert tours in most of the United States and Europe, as well as the Middle East, Central America, and Asia. He has performed among the dunes of the Negev Desert, in Leonard Bernstein’s living room, and on the stages of many of the world’s finest concert halls. He has been a guest on Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz”, and he has also performed with some legendary orchestras, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, the Boston Pops under both Arthur Fiedler and Keith Lockhart, and several regional orchestras around the US.
Sullivan has worked in some of New York’s most prestigious jazz clubs as well, including Sweet Basil, The Village Vanguard, and Bradley’s. He has played with a wide variety of masters from Benny Goodman to Tommy Flanagan, as well as Red Mitchell, Lou Donaldson, George Mraz, Gerry Hemingway, Marc Helias, Gene Bertoncini, Eugene Friesen, Jamie Haddad, Luciana Sousa, Cafe, Sarah Lee Guthrie, Noel Stookey, Don McLean, Pheeroan AkLaff, Eddie Daniels, Richard Stoltzman, Nana Vasconcelos, Cyro Baptista, Ivan Lins, Glen Velez and many other luminaries. His 18 CDs have sold over 300 thousand copies and have won 3 Indie Awards. His music has been broadcast internationally, as well as on all the major American networks, including National Public Radio. He received a Grammy Award for his work on the Paul Winter Consort CD, Silver Solstice.
In the theater world, he has worked as a Musical Director, pianist, and/or conductor for many Off-Broadway and Broadway shows. He played keyboards and shared the conducting duties for the original production of the musical Nine, which won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Some of the other shows he’s worked on include Cats, A Chorus Line, Rags, and a cabaret with Lewis Black. Other theater credits include accompanying Joseph Papp and even appearing as a character on the TV soap opera One Life To Live.
Sullivan also received commissions to write two musicals, including “The Last Ferryman” for which he wrote both the music and lyrics, which are available on CD.
He has also worked extensively in the Modern Dance world, playing piano for Merce Cunningham’s classes, and writing music for the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. He has also enjoyed a long friendship with the Pilobolus Dance Theater, for whom he has written close to 20 scores.
A long, lovely, lucky career, which shows no signs of stopping.
—–
“Con Fullam is one of the most diverse and talented songwriters that I have had the pleasure to publish”. Lou Ragusa, President Infinity/MCA Music.
“Fullam’s songs are passionate and intelligent.” Billboard Magazine
.Fullam has been playing and performing since he was 5 years old. It was at that age that his father died leaving him his ukelele. He was born on a farm in Sydney, Maine population 60 or so people, 600 or so cows and thousands of acres of fields, and woods. He spent a lot of that time playing his ukelele and singing songs he learned from his family, all of whom played an instrument. His brother and sister loved folk music, bluegrass and the blues and so he learned the songs of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, The Weavers, Flatt and Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, The Carter Family, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Josh White Sr., Hudie Ledbetter and Lightnin’ Hopkins to name a few.
His mother was a pianist whose taste ran towards Classical music and Broadway. And so he learned to love Bach, Beethoven and Scarlatti, The Pirates of Penzance, My Fair Lady and Oklahoma.
Con’s musical education continued with enrollment at The New Division, an experimental college in Springvale, Maine founded by a behavioral scientist from Harvard by the name of Tom Howard. There, he pushed himself to step up and learn new chords and progressions on the guitar as well as hone his skills at wordsmithing. It was there with a lot of support from his fellow students that he realized that playing and writing were the things that made him the happiest and that it was down that road he would travel. In the forty years that have passed since that first semester he has never looked back.
“Over the course of my career, I have had the honor of playing with some of the finest musicians in the business and I have been blessed to call many of them my close and cherished friends. It is those friends that I have called on to help me realize this dream….” Con Fullam
Con is now published by MCA Universal, Sony/BMG, Warner/Chappell, Acuff Rose, Opryland, and Chrysalis Music. He has had his songs recorded by major recording artists and has produced records that have sold over a half million units. He has played with and shared stages with the likes of Asleep At The Wheel, Joan Armatrading, Aztec Two Step, Razzy Bailey, David Bromberg, Johnny Cash, George Carlin, Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Emmy Lou Harris with Gram Parsons, Waylon Jennings, Jorma Kaukenon, Willie Nelson, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, John Sebastian, Earl Scruggs Review and Tammy Wynette,
Con has been critically acclaimed in many of the music industry’s most prestigious publications such as Billboard, Music Row, Village Voice, Boston Phoenix, Canadian Country News, Cashbox Magazine, and Nashville Music City News. He has been nominated for an Emmy and has been recognized by The American Society Of Composers Authors And Publishers for his contributions to the world of the performing arts.

TICKETS

SERIES TICKETS

Capriccio - Andy Happel and Los Galactacos String Band
2018-09-08 19:30 | The Barn Gallery, 3 Hartwig Lane (off Bourne Lane at Shore Road), Ogunquit, Maine, 03907
TICKETS

SERIES TICKETS

Andy Happel and his Los Galactacos String Band will be returning in triumph to the Barn Gallery on Saturday, September 8th at 7:30 pm, – after a dynamic performance there one year ago left the audience dancing in the aisles and calling for more!
Performing a lively repertoire of songs, from Chile to Canada, Los Galactacos brings together an exotic combination of voice, guitar, violin, cello, dobro, cuatro, upright bass, acoustic bass, guitarron, drums and percussion.
Their program includes a variety of beautiful tunes and rousing rhythms from across the Americas, and across the seas: Tex/Mex folk; Appalachian string music; Canadian maritimes fiddle tunes; the Classic American Songbook; ol’ time Country; and music for wherever people gather and celebrate.

Founded in summer 2015 on a lark to enjoy some late-summer soirees, the Los Galactacos musical excursion was quickly underway with multi-instrumentalist Andy Happel as navigator. A true translator and ambassador of musical ideas, Happel has infused his music with elegant fire – ranging from Capitol Records’ Thanks to Gravity and modern classical label PARMA, to his work with the Don Campbell Band, and his ever-expanding teaching studio. Joining him are Drew Wyman (Thanks to Gravity, the Cozmik Zombies), Todd the Rocket (The Downbeat Renaissance), and Pete Witham (The Cozmik Zombies, Spookie Daly Pride).
Already in their adventure, the group has entertained at the Wentworth By The Sea Hotel (Newcastle, NH), Wentworth Marina, The Wentworth (Jackson, NH), two seasons residency at El Rayo in Scarborough, Maine, and a collection of private residences.

Andy Happel is a concert violinist and fiddler who has shared the stage with symphonies, pop stars and country music luminaries alike. As bandleader for 90s rock group Thanks to Gravity, Andy was signed to Capitol Records and EMI Publishing and toured extensively with the likes of Guster, Train, Matchbox 20 and the Dave Matthews Band. A successful run with country singer Don Campbell followed, where he opened for country legends Willie Nelson, Randy Travis, George Jones and Charlie Daniels. He currently performs with classical improv group Aeterna Trio, and several other independent projects.
Recently, he was nominated for a NATAS Boston/New England Emmy, and performed O’Connor’s The Fiddle Concerto as guest soloist with the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra
Andy is also Lead Producer with new classical music label PARMA Recordings. He has worked with the Moravian Philharmonic in the Czech Republic, the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus and the New England String Quartet, among others.

TICKETS

SERIES TICKETS

12th Annual Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham Piano Festival
2018-10-05 - 2018-10-12 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
This year’s Festival features the music of the master composers of Austria, Germany and France, as performed by two international artists, Boston’s Victor Rosenbaum on Friday, October 5th, and New York’s Sachiko Kato on Friday October 12th, both at 7:30 pm.
The Festival also includes an afternoon performance by Southern Maine’s finest young pianists in the Student Piano Recital, Sunday, October 7th at 3:00 pm. Admission to this performance is free.
The Festival honors the memory of Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham, founder and first chairperson of Ogunquit Performing Arts. A pianist herself, Betty studied, performed and taught piano for most of her life. She also saw to it that OPA acquired its spectacular Steinway Concert Model C Grand Piano, which still remains OPA’ greatest treasure.

Victor Rosenbaum
2018-10-05 19:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
CONCERT CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS
Renowned Boston pianist Victor Rosenbaum performs the music of Brahms and Schubert. Tickets go on sale on this website Sept 14.

Mr. Rosenbaum’s Program
Three Intermezzi, Opus 117 – Johannes Brahms 1833-1897
Four Short Pieces, and Four More Short Pieces – John Heiss 1938 –
Sonata in A Major, D. 664 – Franz Schubert 1797- 1828

American pianist Victor Rosenbaum has concertized widely as soloist and chamber music performer in the United States, Europe, Asia, Israel, and Russia in such prestigious halls as Tully Hall in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.
His highly praised recording of Schubert, which Classical disCDigest described as “a powerful and poignant record of human experience,” is on Bridge Records. The release of the last three Beethoven sonatas on the same label was named by American Record Guide critic Alan Becker as one of the top ten classical recordings of 2005 and Susan Kagan of Fanfare wrote of that disc: “Victor Rosenbaum’s rewarding interpretation can sit proudly among the best.” Two recent recordings on the Fleur de Sonlabel feature music of Schubert and Mozart.
Described by the Boston Globe as “one of those artists who make up for all the drudgery the habitual concertgoer endures in the hopes of finding the real, right thing,” Rosenbaum has collaborated with such artists as Leonard Rose, Paul Katz, Arnold Steinhardt, Robert Mann, Joseph Silverstein, Malcolm Lowe, and the Brentano, Borromeo, and Cleveland String Quartets, among others. Festival appearances have included Tanglewood, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Kfar Blum and Tel Hai (in Israel), Yellow Barn, Kneisel Hall (Blue Hill), Musicorda, Masters de Pontlevoy (France), the Heifetz Institute, the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, and the International Music Seminar in Vienna. Concert appearances in recent years have brought him to Chicago, Minneapolis, Tokyo, Beijing, St. Petersburg (Russia), Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, New York and Boston, and other cities.
A student of Elizabeth Brock and Martin Marks in his hometown of Indianapolis, Rosenbaum later studied with Rosina Lhevinne and Leonard Shure while earning degrees at Brandeis and Princeton Universities. Now a renowned teacher himself, Rosenbaum presently serves on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music in New York and the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he formerly chaired the piano and chamber music departments. He has been Visiting Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, a guest teacher at Juilliard, and presents lectures, workshops, and master classes for teachers’ groups and schools both in the U. S. and abroad, including London’s Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, and Guildhall School, the conservatories of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Beijing Central Conservatory, the Toho School in Tokyo and other institutions such as the Menuhin School, and the Jerusalem Music Center. Rosenbaum was Director and President of the Longy School of Music from 1985-2001.

Student Piano Recital
2018-10-07 15:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
The Festival continues on Sunday afternoon, October 7th at 3 pm with the Student Piano Recital, featuring the area’s best young pianists performing on OPA’s fabled Steinway. It is here that talented local students have the opportunity to perform on a world-class piano in front of a live audience. Admission to this performance is free.
The Festival honors the memory of Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham, founder and first chairperson of Ogunquit Performing Arts. A pianist herself, Betty studied, performed and taught piano for most of her life. She also saw to it that OPA acquired its spectacular Steinway Concert Model C Grand Piano, which still remains OPA’s greatest treasure.

Sachiko Kato
2018-10-12 19:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Eloquent New York pianist Sachiko Kato performs the music of Debussy and Ravel. Tickets go on sale on this website Sept 14.

TICKETS

Ms. Kato’s Program

Preludes
La fille aux cheveux de lin
Les collines d’Anacapri
La Puerta del Vino
Bruyeres
Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest
Etudes
Pour les “cinq doigt” d’apres Monsieur Czerny
Pour les Quartes
Pour les Degres chromatiques
Pour les Arpeges composes
Pour les Accords
L’isle joyeuse
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Intermission

Le Tombeau de Couperin
Prelude
Fugue
Forlane
Regaudon
Menuet
Toccata
La Valse
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Sachiko Kato, known for her expressive and gorgeous tone, is a classical pianist whose interest ranges from Bach to the contemporary. She has performed throughout the United States and her native Japan, as well as in Canada and Brazil. Her current projects include a recording of the Brahms’s late piano works released in early 2017.
Ms. Kato has previously recorded the Goldberg Variations on the Centaur Records label in 2012. Jerry Dubins of Fanfare claims “Sachiko Kato’s performance is truly special” and “… everyone who embraces Bach’s Goldberg Variations on piano, this deserves to be heard and is urgently recommended.” Her playing has been broadcasted by New York’s public radio station WNYC on its “New Sounds” program, as well as New York’s classical station WQXR, KMZT (Los Angeles) and WKCR FM (Columbia University station, New York). Sachiko’s performances have received critical acclaim: “the velvet smoothness and silken beauty … an extremely imaginative player … she plays with such a sense of effortlessness and ease” (Fanfare Jan.-Feb. 2013); “a lovely, delicate touch … interpretive clarity … impressively crisp fingerwork and consistent energy.” (New York Concert Review). Ms. Kato was also featured in the Juilliard centenary publication, “Dance Drama Music: 100 Years of the Juilliard School,” as one of the 100 outstanding alumni.
A champion of new music, Ms. Kato has commissioned, premiered, and recorded contemporary works. She founded Weaving Japanese Sounds, contemporary Japanese music concert project in 2004 in the hopes of facilitating cultural exchanges between the US and Japan by introducing Japanese new music to American audiences in an accessible manner. The concerts are presented annually with a coterie of top-tier musicians and have been garnering critical acclaim and enthusiastic followers.
Ms. Kato has won numerous competitions such as the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition and the Pro-Piano Recital Series Auditions, both held in New York. After her debut at Carnegie Weill Hall in 1995, she has performed extensively throughout the world. She has been heard at the Lincoln Center Alice Tully Hall and Performing Arts Library, Steinway Hall in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Arcady Music Festival in Maine. She has toured Canada and Brazil under the auspice of Japan Foundation, and performed an all-Japanese composers program in Algeria.
Sachiko Kato was born in Osaka, Japan and immigrated to Los Angles with her family at the age of 14. She graduated from California State University Northridge and then, on scholarship, completed her Master’s Degree at the Juilliard School. She did further studies in Boston with the famed pianist/teacher, Russell Sherman. Ms. Kato is based in New York City.

TICKETS

Classic Film: The African Queen
2018-11-04 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
The African Queen is the first film in Ogunquit Performing Arts 2018-19 Classic Film Series.
Ogunquit Performing Arts presents the first film in its 2018-19 Classic Film Series on Sunday, November 4, 2018 at 2 pm in the Dunaway Center with the screening of The African Queen. Starring Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, this classic adventure film will be shown on a wall-sized screen, with free admission, parking, and popcorn. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit.
The African Queen (1951) began as a novel written by English author C.S. Forester and published in 1935. This unique adventure story about the relationship between a prim spinster and the scruffy boat captain who takes her down the river was kicked around as a potential movie idea for years in Hollywood. RKO thought about making it with Charles Laughton and his actress wife Elsa Lanchester, but ultimately the project was scrapped. The thinking was that audiences would not want to see a romance between two middle-aged people….
Still, others saw potential in The African Queen. In 1946 Warner Bros. bought it as a possible vehicle for Bette Davis. That never came to fruition, however, and by 1947 they were trying to unload the property.
Director John Huston, who had always been a fan of the book, wanted desperately to purchase the rights to the property with his producing partner Sam Spiegel as a project for their independent film company. Horizon Pictures…Funding for the project was achieved by a collaboration with Sound Services Inc., whose equipment was also used in the film’s production.
Huston was adamant that writer James Agee would be the one to help him write the screenplay. Agee was a poet, novelist and film critic whose work Huston had always admired…Agee agreed and flew out to California, where he and Huston holed up in a resort hotel outside of Santa Barbara to work on the screenplay. They set a strict regimen for themselves of work and exercise. Though they got a tremendous amount done, Agee was not taking care of himself-he was drinking, smoking and eating too much and not getting enough sleep. Before they could finish the script, Agee had a heart attack and was out of commission for a lengthy recuperation.
Meanwhile, Huston was searching for the ideal leads. Katharine Hepburn was the first one contacted. In 1950 she was touring with the stage production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which was currently playing in Los Angeles. Sam Spiegel sent her a copy of the original novel The African Queen to read while she was staying at the home of her good friend Irene Selznick. She read it and loved it, knowing that the part of Rose would be perfect for her.
Sam Spiegel came out to visit Hepburn, and the two discussed the project and potential actors to play opposite her. Charlie Allnut was supposed to have a Cockney accent, which limited their choices until Spiegel suggested Humphrey Bogart. They both thought him perfect for the part and simply decided to make his character Canadian, which would solve the problem of the Cockney accent. As Katharine Hepburn later wrote in her 1987 book The Making of the African Queen; or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind, “Now, looking back at that conversation-can you imagine anyone but Bogie playing that part? He was really it-hook, line and sinker”.
John Huston and Humphrey Bogart had worked well together previously on The Maltese Falcon (1941), Across the Pacific (1942), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Key Largo (1948) so Huston called up his old pal and said, “Hey, old son, I have a great property. The hero’s a low-life, and since you’re the biggest low-life in town the part is therefore ideal for you!” Though Bogart wasn’t keen on shooting in Africa, he trusted his friend Huston. “He’s brilliant and unpredictable,” said Bogart of Huston. “Never dull. When I work with John, I think about acting. I don’t worry about business.” Huston, in turn, called Bogart “an ideal collaborator and companion…He’s a joy to work with…his figure seemed to find its way into whatever I did.”
Bogie had never worked with Katharine Hepburn, and neither had John Huston for that matter. The actor was somewhat leery of working with her, having heard she could be difficult. However, when Bogie and Huston met with Hepburn, she won them over. In her 1979 autobiography By Myself, Lauren Bacall (Humphrey Bogart’s wife) said that Bogie had never wanted to travel out of the country, but she herself was longing to go and see the world. “Bogie,” she said, “liked his life as it was; going to New York was all the traveling he wanted to do. Finally Sam Spiegel told Katharine Hepburn that he had Bogie and John – to John that he had Bogie and Katie – told Bogie that he had John and Katie – and The African Queen was put together.”
The African Queen was a big box office and critical success, honored with four Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay. It also provided a major career boost for the director and his two stars. In fact, Humphrey Bogart scored his biggest triumph with his role as Charlie Allnut, and he won his only Academy Award as Best Actor for it.
by Andrea Passafiume for Turner Classic Movies

Classic Film: The Nutcracker
2018-12-02 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Filmed at the Royal Opera House by the BBC, this historic performance from 1968 captures Rudolf Nureyev at the peak of his career. The ballet is in two acts adapted from Alexandre Dumas – Music: Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky – Choreography: Rudolf Nureyev after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov – Production: Rudolph Nureyev. Co-starring Merle Park with Artists of the Royal Ballet, London.
The Nutcracker was created on the 18th December 1892 at the Maryinski Theatre in Saint-Petersburg. Rudolf Nureyev staged The Nutcracker for the first time in November 1967 for the Royal Swedish Ballet following the request of Erick Bruhn. This version was to be revived several times in London, Milan, Buenos Aires and Berlin.
Nureyev aimed to retain the ballet’s appeal to children while changing the balance of roles and choreography to be of more interest to adults as well. The work traditionally featured the toymaker Drosselmeyer giving a magic nutcracker to the child Clara, who is then transported to a distant land of sweets, where she enjoys watching a series of dances by solo artists from the ballet company, climaxed by the famous dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince.
The original libretto by Alexandre Dumas was completely revised by Nureyev who gave his version of The Nutcracker a psychoanalytic dimension: Drosselmeyer and the Prince are one and the same person, representing the ideal man dreamt up by the heroine, ready to leave her childhood and become a young woman. Clara herself becomes the Sugar Plum Fairy and Princess, joining her Prince in the final Grand Pas de Deux.
With the additional choreography for these two, including another Pas de Deux in the first act, Nureyev created two major roles suitable for a company’s leading dancers, and gave the ballet a more cohesive plot.
This new approach was soon adopted in other companies and productions, including one by Baryshnikov for American Ballet Theatre ten years later.
From the beginning of his career, Nureyev had already changed the role of the male dancer in the general repertoire, which heretofore had traditionally been to support and showcase the ballerina, with only a few solo moments for himself. Nureyev upgraded the choreography, requiring the premier danseur to perform as intricate and demanding steps as the prima ballerina, whether in unison, mirror-image, or complementary fashion.
“He made a revolution on the way to consider a male dancer,” says dancer Laurent Hilaire. “All of the big classical ballet was meant to value the woman, and also his work reflected the dance he saw in Denmark, France, England and Russia. He learned from all over the world and he created his own style. You know when it’s a step from Nureyev as soon as you see it. You cannot really compare it, but his choreography is as rich as the language of Shakespeare or Molière.”
“For me, purity of movement wasn’t enough. I needed expression, more intensity, more mind.” Rudolph Nureyev
His choreographies were extremely intense and vivid. Never one to take the easy way out, if the musical theme was repeated four times, he wanted the step to be performed four times keeping the same purity and the same simplicity (which is, basically, the most difficult!), the repetition enriching the impression of discipline and beauty.
Nureyev was also known for his seemingly effortless leaps and jumps. In classical ballet jumps aim at a vertical elevation; in modern ballet, they move horizontally through space. Nureyev implemented a combination of the two: to jump very high whilst moving across the stage. The spectator has the impression that the dancer is flying, and is instantaneously suspended in midair.
All of the achievements of this tremendous dancer are reflected in this live performance film, in his sumptuous production recalling the ballet’s Russian origins. Nureyev is joined by The Royal Ballet’s prima ballerina Merle Park, whose glowing performance of this new role lifted her to international stardom in the world of dance.
Sources: The Rudolph Nureyev Foundation; The New York Times

Classic Film: One, Two, Three
2019-01-06 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Pamela Tiffin watching as Horst Buchholz and James Cagney are about to get into a food fight in a scene from the film ‘One, Two, Three’, 1961. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)
One, Two, Three is a 1961 brilliant American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder, and written by Wilder and I. A. Diamond. The comedy stars James Cagney, Arlene Francis, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin and Lilo Pulver. It was filmed in West Berlin and Munich in the summer of 1961.
The film is primarily set in West Berlin during the Cold War, but before the construction of the Berlin Wall. It is known for its extraordinary fast pace, taking satiric aim at communism, capitalism, post-war Germany, corporate America, previous Cagney films, alligator shoes, and a host of other targets.

Billy Wilder wrote and/or directed a wide variety of pictures during his renowned career. But he’s probably best known for the stunning comedies he created with screenwriter I. A. Diamond. One, Two, Three is a prime example, with a mile-a-minute script pitting Coca-Cola against Communism.
James Cagney’s performance is a tour de force, delivering pages of script at dizzying speed. In Cameron Crowe’s book, Conversations with Wilder (Alfred A. Knopf), the director commented on Cagney’s delivery, saying “We knew that we were going to have a comedy, we [were] not going to be waiting for the laughs. But we had to go with Cagney, because Cagney was the whole picture. He really had the rhythm, and that was very good…”
In the film, Cagney plays C.R. MacNamara, Coca-Cola’s ambitious head of bottling in West Germany, who is determined to cut a deal to distribute Coke to the Russian market while at the same time desperately trying to prevent the boss’s visiting flighty daughter (Tiffin) from marrying a card-carrying communist hippie (Buchholz), while under the disapproving eye of his own neglected wife (Francis).
Then in his early sixties, Cagney was not initially certain he should take on the part. On reading the script, he understood that the bulk of the film rested on his abilities and stamina. And indeed, Wilder’s insistence on breakneck, rat-a-tat-tat timing to each and every scene soon began to wear on Cagney, – especially on those occasions when the actor received pages of script only the night before, and then was expected to spit out a steady stream of complex dialogue while handling equally complicated stage direction. Cagney was genuinely irked that Wilder demanded word-for-word perfection and wouldn’t accept even the slightest bit of paraphrasing.
He was even more aggravated with Buchholz, the only actor whom Cagney, a consummate gentleman, ever openly disliked. Said Cagney, “…this Horst Buchholz character I truly loathed. Had he kept on with his little scene-stealing didoes, I would have been forced to knock him on his ass, which I would have very much enjoyed doing.”
Despite everything, Cagney achieved a triumphant performance and enjoyed a great success with this film. However, One, Two, Three also would be his last film appearance until Ragtime in 1981, 20 years later.
The film won kudos from the staff at Variety. They wrote, “Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three is a fast-paced, high-pitched, hard-hitting, lighthearted farce crammed with topical gags and spiced with satirical overtones. Story is so furiously quick-witted that some of its wit gets snarled and smothered in overlap. But total experience packs a considerable wallop.”
Despite great reviews, and awards from the Academy, Golden Globes, and Writers Guild of America, One, Two, Three did not do well at either the U.S. or German box office. The lighthearted East-West Berlin story felt much more sinister at the release, since the Berlin Wall had been built after filming began. (The building of the Berlin Wall began during the night of August 13, 1961, – right through the film set at the Brandenburg Gate. The film team, discovering the change in the morning, had to move the production to Munich.)
One, Two, Three was also banned in Finland from 1962 to 1986 on “political” grounds — it was feared that the film would harm relations between Finland and the Soviet Union. United Pictures Finland tried to get the film released theatrically in 1962, 1966 and 1969 but it was only in 1986 that the Finnish Board of Film Classification allowed the film to be distributed.
In a complete reversal of fortune, the film was also received enthusiastically in Germany upon its 1985 re-release in movie theaters. One, Two, Three was given a grand re-premier at a large outdoor showing in Berlin which was broadcast simultaneously over television. The film went on to spend a year in the Berlin theaters as it was rediscovered by West Berlin citizens.

Classic Film: Guys and Dolls
2019-02-03 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Based on the short stories of Damon Runyan, and with music and lyrics by the legendary Frank Loesser, the original production of Guys and Dolls opened on Broadway November 24, 1950, and ran for 1200 performances. The film version, starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine (recreating her stage role as Adelaide), had the highest box office gross of 1955. The film also features Stubby Kaye, B.S. Pully, Johnny Silver, and Sheldon Leonard.
Guys and Dolls is a fable about gambling men, and the women who try to tame them. Set in the colorful world of New York’s Times Square in the mid-20th century, the flashy and witty Guys and Dolls is populated with gangsters and gamblers, thugs and mugs, missionary dolls and scantily clad showgirls, and one of the great musical scores in the history of American theatre.
It all begins with a bet. In a desperate effort to finance a location for “The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York” and under pressure from its gangster participants, Nathan Detroit (Sinatra) bets high-rolling gambler Sky Masterson (Brando) that Sky cannot persuade Save-A-Soul Mission Sergeant Sarah Brown (Simmons) to accompany him on a trip to Cuba. While the worldly Sky works his charms on a wary Sarah, Nathan is doing his best to stay outside the matrimonial clutches of his long-suffering fiancée, showgirl Miss Adelaide (Blaine).

Songs include well-known Loesser favorites, including such dynamic ensembles as “Luck Be a Lady”, “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat”, “Fugue for Tinhorns” – (I’ve Got the Horse Right Here!), and the title song. Loesser added two lovely ballads written especially for the film, “Adelaide” and “Woman In Love.” Under the direction of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with fabulous dance numbers choreographed by Michael Kidd, and new music coming from the composer, the musical was given the usual lavish attention by MGM Studios.
Born in 1910 in New York, composer Frank Loesser never studied music formally, although he certainly came under the influence of his father, a distinguished German-born teacher of classical piano, and of his older brother Arthur, who was a renowned concert pianist and musicologist.
In a few short years, Loesser created five Broadway musicals whose impact and popularity continue to this day. Over the years the many revivals of Guys and Dolls, The Most Happy Fella, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Greenwillow, and Where’s Charley?, have enjoyed as great success, and have won multiple awards equalling, and sometimes exceeding, the original productions.

In the late 1940’s, Loesser also formed his own music publishing company, Frank Music Corporation, with the primary purpose of discovering and developing new and young popular composers and lyricists. The company became a major force in music publishing, licensing of secondary theatrical rights, and production of printed music editions.
In the midst of all his stage work and publishing projects, Loesser was no stranger to Hollywood and composed, wrote, or co-wrote for some fifty films. He created one of his best loved scores for the film, Hans Christian Anderson, which featured such songs as “Wonderful Copenhagen”, “Anywhere I Wander”, “The Inch Worm”, and “Thumbelina”, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
From the Pulitzer Prize to the American Theatre Wing’s Tony Award to Hollywood’s highest honor, Frank Loesser won them all.

Classic Film: Cape Fear
2019-03-03 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Cape Fear (1962)

“In the annals of screen psychopaths, there are few who can top Robert Mitchum’s portrayal of Max Cady in the 1962 version of Cape Fear. A convicted sex offender who is released from prison after serving a six year sentence, Cady is a walking time bomb, biding his time until he can take revenge on the prosecutor who put him away. Everything about him exudes menace, from his hooded eyes and insouciant sexual swagger to his smirking, undisguised contempt for everyone he meets. Mitchum was born to play this role and he applies the same relentless intensity to the part that he brought to his portrayal of Harry Powell, the homicidal preacher from The Night of the Hunter (1955).

“Gregory Peck actually deserves the credit for casting Mitchum as Max Cady and taking the more low-key role of attorney Sam Bowden. After buying the rights to the John D. MacDonald novel, The Executioners, Peck reassembled several previous collaborators who had served him well in the past, namely J. Lee Thompson, who had just helmed the enormously successful war adventure, The Guns of Navarone (1961), producer Sy Bartlett and screenwriter James Webb. Initially, Rod Steiger and Telly Savalas were considered for the part of Cady but once Mitchum became a possibility, Peck pushed for his commitment. At first Mitchum didn’t want to do the film but finally relented after Peck and Thompson delivered a case of bourbon to his home. His reply, ‘Ok, I’ve drunk your bourbon… I’ll do it.'” Jeff Stafford for TCM
Cape Fear also stars Polly Bergen, Lori Martin, Martin Balsam, Barrie Chase, and Telly Savalas.

Thompson had always envisioned the film in black and white prior to production. As an Alfred Hitchcock fan, he wanted to have Hitchcockian elements in the film, such as unusual lighting angles, an eerie musical score, closeups, and subtle hints, rather than graphic depictions of the violence Cady has in mind for the family.
This scene where Mitchum attacks Polly Bergen’s character on the houseboat was alleged to be somewhat improvised. Before the scene was filmed, Thompson suddenly told a crew member: “Bring me a dish of eggs!” Mitchum’s rubbing the eggs on Bergen was not scripted and Bergen’s reactions were presumably real. While filming the scene, Mitchum cut open his hand, leading Bergen to recall: “his hand was covered in blood, my back was covered in blood. We just kept going, caught up in the scene. They came over and physically stopped us.”

The Production Code Administration still wielded power in the film industry in the early sixties and Cape Fear was certainly a cause for concern for them. After reviewing the film, suggestions were made to remove several shots and references. British censors demanded 161 cuts! Cape Fear was finally released there shorn of six minutes of footage.
Because of the film’s disturbing nature, critical reviews were mixed. Yet, the film’s claustrophobic sense of impending terror and Mitchum’s mesmerizing performance are hard to dismiss lightly, and the film is now recognized as a psy chological thriller masterpiece, eclipsing even the 1991 remake by Martin Scorsese.

Stillson School of Irish Dance
2019-03-09 18:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Irish Stepdancing continues to be a wildly popular art form for performers and audiences alike. Ogunquit Performing Arts celebrates this unique style of dance at this most appropriate time of year. The award-winning Stillson dancers, returning to Ogunquit by popular demand, will perform a brilliant array of jigs and reels, dressed in a variety of dazzling, hand-made costumes.

The performance will consist of both the fluid soft shoe style as well as the rhythmic hard shoe popularized by shows such as Riverdance and Lord of the Dance.
At the end of the performance, the dancers will invite children and the young at heart to join them onstage to learn or try out some steps. A reception with refreshments will conclude the evening.
The Stillson School of Irish Dance is under the direction of the celebrated dancer/teacher Carlene Moran Stillson ADCRG/TCRG. She is accredited by Ad Coimisium in Dublin, Ireland and a member of IDTANA (Irish Dancing Teacher’s Association of North America). Carlene has a long tradition of dancing having started at age 4. She has competed in the New England Regional, North American, and World Championships.
In existence for more than 20 years, the Stillson School is the only certified school of Irish dancing in the state of Maine and its dancers compete all over New England and place in the New England Regional Irish Dancing Championships annually, and in competitions around the world.

In addition to the dance performance, Carlene Stillson will tell about the history of the dance and explain the reasons for the design of the many different costumes worn by the dancers. Traditional Irish dress is represented in the school dress which features embroidery designs taken from the Book of Kells.
The Stillson School of Irish Dance also has an active show team which has performed throughout New England as well as on the Elipse lawn of the White House. They have been featured dancers accompanying such renowned Celtic performers as Solas, Cherish the Ladies, Trinity Dance Company, Liz Carroll, Billy McComiskey and Mick Moloney, and Eileen Ivers.

Classic Film: Breaker Morant
2019-04-07 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Breaker Morant (1980)
Based on a true story from the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902), Breaker Morant (1979) was an unexpected hit that helped usher in the spate of commercially successful and critically acclaimed Australian films that took the U.S. and the world by storm in the early 1980s. Made for only $800,000, this drama about the extraordinary and tragic circumstances faced by men at war struck a chord with audiences, especially in an America that had recently come out of the Viet Nam war. The film racked up several Australian Film Institute Awards, as well as many nominations in other countries, opening up a wealth of opportunities for director Bruce Beresford. He became one of the hot new directors from Down Under and went on to direct such hit films in the U.S. as Tender Mercies (1983), which netted Beresford the Golden Palm at Cannes, an Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Actor (Robert Duvall), and Driving Miss Daisy (1989), an Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Best Actress Jessica Tandy and Best Adapted Screenplay (by Alfred Uhry).
Breaker Morant chronicles an incident in 1901 when three Australian soldiers fighting on the side of the British in South Africa were court-martialed for executing enemy prisoners. Acting under orders from British high command during a brutal guerrilla war (the first of its similarities to Viet Nam), Harry “Breaker” Morant and his fellow soldiers in the Australian Bushveldt Carbineers exact revenge for the murder and mutilation of one of their officers by the Boers, South African farmers of Dutch descent revolting against the British in the century’s first colonial war. Several Boer prisoners and a German missionary the trio believe to be a spy are killed. Because the British are aware Germany is looking for an excuse to enter the war on the side of the Boers (to position themselves favorably for access to South Africa’s gold and diamond riches), the command orders the three Australians to be brought to trial as scapegoats, denying the deaths were ever part of an official but covert military policy.
Breaker Morant is unflinchingly a polemical film, skillfully manipulating audiences into sympathy with its protagonists, who are clearly guilty of the act for which they are condemned. In this respect, it has been compared to Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant anti-war film Paths of Glory (1957) and was seen by many reviewers of the time as a parallel to the story of Lt. Calley and the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Early drafts of the screenplay depicted the Australians as innocent of the executions. Beresford rewrote the story to place the focus not on their guilt or innocence but on the far more compelling theme of the extreme acts soldiers are driven to commit and the double-dealing politics of the military elite….
The story is aided in no small part by the honest and affecting performances of its leads. British actor Edward Woodward, who later appeared in the American TV series The Equalizer (1985), plays Morant as a flawed but essentially warm and decent man, in contrast to his pompous, hypocritical superiors. Acting honors are shared by two major Australian stars: Bryan Brown, who went on to great success in America in the TV mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983) and the thriller F/X (1986), and Jack Thompson, who played a Japanese POW in Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) and the sympathetic father in the gay-themed The Sum of Us (1994). As the harried and increasingly emotionally involved defense attorney, Thompson won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Supporting Actor.
by Rob Nixon for TCM

Classic Film: Yentl
2019-05-05 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Yentl is a 1983 romantic musical drama film from United Artists co-written, co-produced and starring Barbra Streisand based on the play of the same name by Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer, itself based on Singer’s short story. The film’s musical score and songs were composed by Michel Legrand. The film also stars Mandy Patinkin, Amy Irving, and Nehemiah Persoff.
The film received the Academy Award for Best Original Score, and the Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and Best Director for Streisand, making her the first woman to have won Best Director at the Golden Globes.
“’This has to be a musical!’ Marilyn and Alan Bergman exclaimed in unison to Barbra Streisand when she showed the songwriters the script for Yentl. This project, developed from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yentl (1983), the Yeshiva Boy, had been dear to Streisand’s heart since she first optioned the story in 1968. It tells of a young Jewish woman in Poland who, after the loss of her father, disguises herself as a boy so she can go to a Yeshiva (Jewish school for priests) and study the Torah. S
treisand, who ended up directing, co-producing and co-writing the film as well as starring in it, had planned it as an intimate, non-musical drama until the Bergmans persuaded her to add songs. As quoted by Streisand biographer James Spada, Marilyn Bergman explained, ‘We felt it was a wonderful story for a musical, because it is [about] a character with a secret. Throughout the picture, after her father dies, there is nobody to whom she can talk, to whom she can reveal her essential self. And this rich inner life becomes the [song] score.’
“Because they felt the music should be lushly romantic and rooted in the European tradition, the Bergmans considered Michel Legrand the perfect composer to collaborate on the Yentl score. ‘The kind of music Michel writes is timeless. It could be the 18th, 19th or 20th century,’ said Alan. Added Marilyn: ‘The challenge was to make the music exotic and colorful, but not so special that it doesn’t have universality.’ In developing the songs, the trio joined Streisand for lengthy sessions in the music room of the Bergmans’ Beverly Hills home. ‘Our housekeeper would bring us food trays and we’d eat up there,’ recalled Alan. ‘Sometimes we’d go late into the night. It was like there was no outside world; the greatest thing about working on the movie was, where else in the world could you call your director and say, “Come over and sing this song for us?”
“The collaboration was so fruitful that Yentl won an Oscar for Best Song Score. The Bergmans and Legrand also were nominated twice in the “Best Song” category, for “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” and “The Way He Makes Me Feel.” (The winner in that category was the title tune from Flashdance.)
Yentl, released through MGM-UA, won only one other nomination, that of Best Supporting Actress for Amy Irving. Noticeably absent in every category for which she was eligible, Streisand did not attend the awards ceremony; Yentl‘s nominated songs were performed by Donna Summer and Jennifer Holliday. ‘In Hollywood, a woman can be an actress, a singer, a dancer,’ Streisand said later. ‘But don’t let her be too much more!’”
by Roger Fristoe for TCM

Jason Anick & The Rhythm Future Quartet
2019-05-17 19:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Gypsy Jazz returns to Ogunquit, led by violinist Jason Anick, with guitar, bass, and Matt DeChamplain at the piano.

Jason Anick and the Rhythm Future Quartet return for their third engagement with Ogunquit Performing Arts in recent years. These dynamic performers have received national acclaim for their lilting rhythms, virtuoso musicianship, and vibrant musical combinations.
Tickets to this performance available now on this website. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ogunquit Camera Shop, Dunaway Center, Ogunquit Playhouse Downtown Box Office, and Ogunquit Welcome Center beginning three weeks prior to the performance. Free parking for the performance is located behind the Dunaway Center.
A favorite of Ogunquit audiences, the acoustic jazz ensemble, Rhythm Future Quartet has a straightforward agenda: to keep the spirit of Gypsy jazz alive and expanding in today’s musical universe. The virtuosic foursome, named for a Django Reinhardt tune, offers up a newly minted sound, influenced by the classic Hot Club of France, yet wholly contemporary.
Led by violinist Jason Anick and guitarist Olli Soikkeli, the quartet performs dynamic and lyrical arrangements of both Gypsy jazz standards and original compositions that draw upon diverse international rhythms and musical idioms. With Greg Loughman on bass, and guest performer Matt DeChamplain on piano, Rhythm Future is dedicated to expanding the boundaries of a vital musical genre.
The Fall of 2018 marked the release of their newest album, “Rhythm Future Quartet and Friends”, which features the critically acclaimed singer Cyrille Aimée, brazil’s top bandolimist Hamilton de Holanda, and guitarist Stochelo Rosenberg. While maintaining the effervescent lilt, virtuosic musicianship and adventurous musical leanings of their previous recordings, Rhythm Future Quartet and Travels (picked as one of the best jazz albums of 2016 by All About Jazz and the Huffington Post), RFQ and Friends brings vibrant new colors to the mix.

With its arresting blend of Hot Club of France styled string jazz, Brazilian and East European idioms, original compositions and hints of classical music, the album marks a significant moment in the growth of a continually evolving ensemble. (And one with continually increasing popularity: the quartet’s version of Django’s “Minor Swing” has over four million views on YouTube, while their video clip of “Bushwick Stomp” from Travels has over three million Facebook views.)
Jason Anick, an award-winning composer and one of the youngest violin professors at the esteemed Berklee College of Music in Boston, has shared the stage with an array of artists including Grammy award winning guitarist John Jorgenson, Stevie Wonder, The Jim Kweskin Jug Band, and Tommy Emmanuel. After relocating from Scandinavia Olli Soikkeli quickly became a top call guitarist in the bustling Brooklyn jazz scene. He has performed alongside Cyrille Aimee, and the celebrated guitarists Frank Vignola and Bucky Pizzarelli, and many prominent contemporary players.

Pianist Matt DeChamplain is from Hartford, Connecticut. He obtained his bachelors degree from the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School in 2010 and graduated with his masters from the University of Toledo in Ohio in 2012. Matt has performed at the Berks Jazz Festival, New York’s JVC Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Django By The Sea Gypsy Jazz Festival and jazz clubs such as the Regatta Bar, The Side Door, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Smalls and Yoshi’s. Currently Matt holds a faculty position at The Hartt School of Music (University of Hartford) and has taught at The Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, The Artist’s Collective (founded by Jackie McLean), the Litchfield Jazz Camp and New Hampshire and Maine’s Jazz All-State programs. While maintaining an active performance and teaching schedule, Matt continues to arrange and compose.
Book online now!

25th Annual Chamber Music Festival Boston Chamber Music
2019-06-07 19:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Cellist Bruce Coppock leads the Boston Chamber Music trio with Matthew Vera, violin, and Randall Hodgkinson, piano.
Ogunquit’s favorite Boston Chamber Music returns to the Dunaway Center for its 20th year of opening the Festival. This year the trio is led by acclaimed cellist Bruce Coppock, with Matthew Vera, violin, and Randall Hodgkinson, piano. As with his predecessor Thomas Hill, Mr. Coppock continues the tradition of bringing together the finest ensembles especially selected for this concert. Their program will include:
BEETHOVEN Piano Trio in D Major, Opus 70 #1 “Ghost”
DEBUSSY Pour le Piano
BRAHMS Piano Trio in B major, Opus 8.
Tickets to this performance available now on this website. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ogunquit Camera Shop, Dunaway Center, Ogunquit Playhouse Downtown Box Office, and Ogunquit Welcome Center beginning three weeks prior to the performance. Free parking for the performance is located behind the Dunaway Center.

Bruce Coppock has enjoyed a long musical career as performer, teacher and management executive. He served twice as president & managing director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, a position in which he served both as the artistic and the executive director. Coppock first led the SPCO from 1999 until 2008, when he stepped down due to illness. After a five-year hiatus during which Coppock focused on medical issues, served a consultant to several orchestras, and served as managing director of the Cleveland Orchestra’s Miami Residency, Coppock resumed his tenure in Saint Paul in 2013. He retired from the SPCO at the end of 2015. Prior to Saint Paul, Coppock was deputy director of Carnegie Hall and executive director of the Saint Louis Symphony, and has happily retired to New England.
During the 20 years prior to 1990, Coppock served as principal cellist of the Handel & Haydn Society, as a member of the Boston Musica Viva and played regularly in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Coppock co-founded the Boston Chamber Music Society. During this period he also served as the director of chamber music and orchestra activities at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was director of the Music Division of the Boston Conservatory of Music. Coppock has been active as a teacher for over 40 years. Coppock earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in cello from the New England Conservatory, where he was a student of David Soyer and Laurence Lesser.
Violinist​ ​Matthew​ ​Vera​, is known for his versatility as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral leader. Currently a masters student at the New England Conservatory, Matthew also enjoys a freelance career in the Boston area. His primary teachers include: James Buswell, Lucy Chapman, Mark Rush, Stephen Moeckel, Dennis Bourret, and David Rife. Matthew has been a member of the Boston Philharmonic’s first violin section since 2010. He recently stepped in on short notice to play the famous violin solos in Ein Heldenleben at Boston Philhamonic concerts to widespread acclaim: “Playing with pure tone, terrific character, and not a bit of hesitation (several of the third movement’s biggest runs were dispatched at lightning speed), Vera delivered an account of the solo part that was wholly captivating. His is — or should be — a bright future.” (Boston Arts Fuse); “Matthew Vera projected non-stop, drop-dead gorgeous tone, alternately flippant and ravishing, as directed. A virtual golden spotlight enwreathed him in laurels.” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer).
Matthew has appeared as soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic, The Tucson Philharmonia, The Tucson Symphony, The World Youth Symphony Orchestra and The New England Conservatory Symphony.Matthew has appeared as soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic, The Tucson Philharmonia, The Tucson Symphony, The World Youth Symphony Orchestra and The New England Conservatory Symphony.

Randall Hodgkinson has achieved recognition as a winner of the International American Music Competition for pianists sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. He has appeared frequently as soloist and chamber music artist in festivals throughout the United States, and as a featured soloist with major orchestras including those of Philadelphia, Atlanta, Buffalo, the American Symphony, the Orchestra of Illinois, and abroad in Italy and Iceland. His solo debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was presented both in Boston and at Carnegie Hall.
Mr. Hodgkinson studied at The Curtis Institute and the New England Conservatory. He has been an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society since 1983. While a member of Boston Musica Viva, he performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, and his recordings on several labels have brought him notable acclaim.
He also performs four-hand and two-piano literature in duo recitals with his wife, Leslie Amper. He is a member of the piano faculty of the New England Conservatory and Wellesley College.
Book online now!

25th Annual Chamber Music Festival ChoralArt Camerata
2019-06-14 19:30 | The Barn Gallery, 3 Hartwig Lane (off Bourne Lane at Shore Road), Ogunquit, Maine, 03907
First performance in Ogunquit by Portland’s ChoralArt Camerata singers, Robert Russell, Music Director

Portland’s ChoralArt Camerata, under the direction of Robert Russell, will make their first appearance in Ogunquit in the lovely setting of the Barn Gallery. A chamber chorus of about 15 singers, Camerata features strong singers and independent musicians; their pristine, resonant sound and utter musicality have garnered regional critical acclaim. Like all the ensembles under the ChoralArt umbrella, Camerata is dedicated to advancing the tradition of artistic excellence in choral singing. Their program will be listed on this site in the near future.
Tickets to this performance available now on this website. Tickets may also be purchased at the Barn Gallery, Ogunquit Camera Shop, Dunaway Center, Ogunquit Playhouse Downtown Box Office, and Ogunquit Welcome Center beginning three weeks prior to the performance. Free parking at the Gallery.
At 15 singers, Camerata is the smallest of the three ChoralArt ensembles (which also include ChoralArt Masterworks, a symphonic chorus of 100 voices, and ChoralArt Singers, a mixed chorus of about 45 voices.)
The Camerata principally performs a cappella repertory from the Renaissance and Modern eras with occasional forays into ethnic and folk music. Favorite composers include Ēriks Ešenvalds, Morten Lauridsen, James MacMillan, Paul Mealor, David Conte, and Stephen Paulus.
Music Director Robert Russell came to Portland in 1979 as professor of music at the University of Southern Maine and music director of ChoralArt. He concluded a 36-year tenure at USM in 2015 and was named professor emeritus. His time in Portland has been rich, the highlights many.

ChoralArt has presented numerous concerts with orchestra, many under the auspices of the Portland Symphony Orchestra. The first Messiah performance in 1982 stunned us all, as we filled City Hall Auditorium (Merrill’s predecessor) with patrons and glorious music.
Other notable performances include Verdi’s Requiem, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Bach’s Passion According to St. John, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and the Brahms Requiem several times, including a riveting performance in 1991 with distinguished guest conductor Robert Shaw. Several collaborative concerts with Portland Ballet, including a dynamic Carmina Burana in 2003, as well as concerts with Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, Southern Maine Symphony Orchestra, USM Wind Ensemble, Musica de Filia and many other regional organization stand out.
Book online now!

29th Annual Capriccio Music Festival Paul Sullivan and Con Fullam
2019-09-06 19:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Grammy-winning Composer/Pianist Paul Sullivan and Emmy-nominated Songwriter/Guitarist Con Fullam in a return performance together!

Paul Sullivan has enjoyed a richly varied and distinguished career as a composer and a pianist. In his solo performances, he creates a relaxed and intimate feeling with his audience through his pleasant and quirky observations about music and life. His warm and inviting personality, coupled with his world-class musicianship, wins over new listeners immediately and usually makes them life-long fans.
Con Fullam is a most talented and accomplished wordsmith and songwriter, but it’s when he himself performs his music that the listener’s experience is most touching, whether his musical stories are wistful, joyous, loving, blue or hopeful. He is a powerful entertainer and guitarist.
Hearing either of them live in concert is a special occasion. But when they join forces, they create a musical event which is simply not to be missed. OPA is proud and fortunate to bring them together as a part of the Capriccio Music Festival.
Tickets to this performance available now on this website. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ogunquit Camera Shop, Dunaway Center, Ogunquit Playhouse Downtown Box Office, and Ogunquit Welcome Center beginning three weeks prior to the performance. Free parking for the performance is located behind the Dunaway Center.

As a soloist, with his trio, and as a member of the Paul Winter Consort, Paul Sullivan has played concert tours in most of the United States and Europe, as well as the Middle East, Central America, and Asia. He has performed among the dunes of the Negev Desert, in Leonard Bernstein’s living room, and on the stages of many of the world’s finest concert halls. He has been a guest on Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz”, and he has also performed with some legendary orchestras, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, the Boston Pops under both Arthur Fiedler and Keith Lockhart, and several regional orchestras around the US.
Sullivan has worked in some of New York’s most prestigious jazz clubs as well, including Sweet Basil, The Village Vanguard, and Bradley’s. He has played with a wide variety of masters from Benny Goodman to Tommy Flanagan, as well as Red Mitchell, Lou Donaldson, George Mraz, Gerry Hemingway, Marc Helias, Gene Bertoncini, Eugene Friesen, Jamie Haddad, Luciana Sousa, Cafe, Sarah Lee Guthrie, Noel Stookey, Don McLean, Pheeroan AkLaff, Eddie Daniels, Richard Stoltzman, Nana Vasconcelos, Cyro Baptista, Ivan Lins, Glen Velez and many other luminaries. His 18 CDs have sold over 300 thousand copies and have won 3 Indie Awards. His music has been broadcast internationally, as well as on all the major American networks, including National Public Radio. He received a Grammy Award for his work on the Paul Winter Consort CD, Silver Solstice.
In the theater world, he has worked as a Musical Director, pianist, and/or conductor for many Off-Broadway and Broadway shows. He played keyboards and shared the conducting duties for the original production of the musical Nine, which won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Some of the other shows he’s worked on include Cats, A Chorus Line, Rags, and a cabaret with Lewis Black. Other theater credits include accompanying Joseph Papp and even appearing as a character on the TV soap opera One Life To Live.
Sullivan also received commissions to write two musicals, including “The Last Ferryman” for which he wrote both the music and lyrics, which are available on CD.
He has also worked extensively in the Modern Dance world, playing piano for Merce Cunningham’s classes, and writing music for the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. He has also enjoyed a long friendship with the Pilobolus Dance Theater, for whom he has written close to 20 scores.
A long, lovely, lucky career, which shows no signs of stopping.

“Con Fullam is one of the most diverse and talented songwriters that I have had the pleasure to publish”. Lou Ragusa, President Infinity/MCA Music.
“Fullam’s songs are passionate and intelligent.” Billboard Magazine
.Fullam has been playing and performing since he was 5 years old. It was at that age that his father died leaving him his ukelele. He was born on a farm in Sydney, Maine population 60 or so people, 600 or so cows and thousands of acres of fields, and woods. He spent a lot of that time playing his ukelele and singing songs he learned from his family, all of whom played an instrument. His brother and sister loved folk music, bluegrass and the blues and so he learned the songs of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, The Weavers, Flatt and Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, The Carter Family, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Josh White Sr., Hudie Ledbetter and Lightnin’ Hopkins to name a few.
His mother was a pianist whose taste ran towards Classical music and Broadway. And so he learned to love Bach, Beethoven and Scarlatti, The Pirates of Penzance, My Fair Lady and Oklahoma.
Con’s musical education continued with enrollment at The New Division, an experimental college in Springvale, Maine founded by a behavioral scientist from Harvard by the name of Tom Howard. There, he pushed himself to step up and learn new chords and progressions on the guitar as well as hone his skills at wordsmithing. It was there with a lot of support from his fellow students that he realized that playing and writing were the things that made him the happiest and that it was down that road he would travel. In the forty years that have passed since that first semester he has never looked back.
“Over the course of my career, I have had the honor of playing with some of the finest musicians in the business and I have been blessed to call many of them my close and cherished friends. It is those friends that I have called on to help me realize this dream….” Con Fullam
Con is now published by MCA Universal, Sony/BMG, Warner/Chappell, Acuff Rose, Opryland, and Chrysalis Music. He has had his songs recorded by major recording artists and has produced records that have sold over a half million units. He has played with and shared stages with the likes of Asleep At The Wheel, Joan Armatrading, Aztec Two Step, Razzy Bailey, David Bromberg, Johnny Cash, George Carlin, Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Emmy Lou Harris with Gram Parsons, Waylon Jennings, Jorma Kaukenon, Willie Nelson, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, John Sebastian, Earl Scruggs Review and Tammy Wynette.
Con has been critically acclaimed in many of the music industry’s most prestigious publications such as Billboard, Music Row, Village Voice, Boston Phoenix, Canadian Country News, Cashbox Magazine, and Nashville Music City News. He has been nominated for an Emmy and has been recognized by The American Society Of Composers Authors And Publishers for his contributions to the world of the performing arts.
Book online now!

29th Annual Capriccio Music Festival Andy Happel and Friends
2019-09-07 10:00 - 11:30 | Ogunquit Beach, Beach Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907
Singer/fiddler Andy Happel makes a special appearance at Capriccio Festival of Kites

Fiddler/singer Andy Happel will provide high-flying music on Ogunquit Beach for the Capriccio Festival of Kites on Saturday, September 7th , from 10 to 11:30 am. Andy plans to bring along some musician friends to join in the joyous fun, playing selections from his repertoire of exotic tunes and lilting rhythms.
His appearance will serve as a preview of his full-length concert with Los Galactacos String Band Friday, September 13th, 7:30 pm at the Dunaway Center. The Band will perform a variety of beautiful songs and rousing rhythms from across the Americas, and across the seas: Tex/Mex folk; Appalachian string music; Canadian maritimes fiddle tunes; the Classic American Songbook; ol’ time Country; and music for wherever people gather and celebrate.
In the meantime, join Andy at the Capriccio Festival of Kites, where songs and kites will fill the air!

29th Annual Capriccio Music Festival Andy Happel & Los Galactacos String Band
2019-09-13 19:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Featuring voice, guitar, violin, cello, dobro, cuatro, upright bass, acoustic bass, guitarron, drums and percussion!

Los Galactacos is a musical group made of adventuring stringbenders, strummers, pickers and percussionists exploring an atlas of musical styles and songs.
Their repertoire is the standards of cultures from across the Americas, and across the seas: Tex/Mex folk; Appalachian string music; Canadian maritimes fiddle tunes; the Classic American Songbook; ol’ time Country; and music for wherever people gather and celebrate.
Tickets to this performance available now on this website. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ogunquit Camera Shop, Dunaway Center, Ogunquit Playhouse Downtown Box Office, and Ogunquit Welcome Center beginning three weeks prior to the performance. Free parking for the performance is located behind the Dunaway Center.
Founded in summer 2015 on a lark to enjoy some late-summer soirees, the excursion was quickly underway with multi-instrumentalist Andy Happel as navigator. A true translator and ambassador of musical ideas, Happel has infused his music with elegant fire – ranging from Capitol Records’ Thanks to Gravity and modern classical label PARMA, to his work with the Don Campbell Band, and his ever-expanding teaching studio. Joining him are Drew Wyman (Thanks to Gravity, the Cozmik Zombies), Todd the Rocket (The Downbeat Renaissance), and Pete Witham (The Cozmik Zombies, Spookie Daly Pride) along with a cast of guests.
Already in their adventure, the group has entertained at the Wentworth By The Sea Hotel (Newcastle, NH), Wentworth Marina, The Wentworth (Jackson, NH), two seasons residency at El Rayo in Scarborough, Maine, and a collection of private residences.

Andy Happel is a concert violinist and fiddler who has shared the stage with symphonies, pop stars and country music luminaries alike. As bandleader for 90s rock group Thanks to Gravity, Andy was signed to Capitol Records and EMI Publishing and toured extensively with the likes of Guster, Train, Matchbox 20 and the Dave Matthews Band. A successful run with country singer Don Campbell followed, where he opened for country legends Willie Nelson, Randy Travis, George Jones and Charlie Daniels. He currently performs with classical improv group Aeterna Trio, and several other independent projects.
Andy is also Lead Producer with new classical music label PARMA Recordings. He has worked with the Moravian Philharmonic in the Czech Republic, the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus and the New England String Quartet, among others.
Book online now!

13th Annual Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham Piano Festival George Lopez
2019-10-04 19:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Bowdoin College Artist-in-Residence George Lopez returns to Ogunquit to play American Pops Piano Music, from Joplin to Gershwin!

Pianist George Lopez, the Robert Beckwith Artist-in-Residence at Bowdoin College & Director of the Bowdoin Orchestra, has been a dynamic performer and educator for over 25 years. He is known on several continents for his thoughtful and deeply expressive performances of the standard repertoire as well as being a champion of newly-written works. He recently premiered a piano concerto composed especially for him and is comfortable in styles of music ranging from jazz and ragtime to more contemporary improvisational styles.
His program for OPA is entitled “The History of American Popular Piano Music”, and includes such composers as Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Scott Joplin, Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Zez Confrey’s “Dizzy Fingers”, Keith Jarrett and Billy Joel!
Tickets to this performance available now on this website. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ogunquit Camera Shop, Dunaway Center, Ogunquit Playhouse Downtown Box Office, and Ogunquit Welcome Center beginning three weeks prior to the performance. Free parking for the performance is located behind the Dunaway Center.
Lopez has given recitals and performed in chamber ensembles and with orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Australia. His interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam received critical acclaim, and a Los Angeles Times critic hailed the pianist for his “…musical perspective, continuity, and kaleidoscopic colors.”
Born in Brooklyn to Mayan parents, George Lopez spent his childhood in Belize, before his family moved to Texas, where he began to play the piano at the rather late age of 11. He quickly discovered that he had a knack performing at the keyboard and, by age 14, he had won his first concerto competition; only two years later, he received a full scholarship to the Hartt School of Music. A Franco-American study grant permitted graduate work in Paris, and he completed his Master’s Degree cum laude at the Sweelinck Conservatory, Amsterdam.

This year, he has toured Philadelphia, New York City, the Bay Area, Seattle, Mexico and New England, as well as making his first visit to Cuba recently to give masterclasses and concerts with the Aries Trio. His “Music in the Museum” series at Bowdoin College has consistently sold out to audiences who enjoy his creative and engaging lecture recitals on the relationship of music to art and ideas. He has also taken up the baton as conductor of the Bowdoin College Symphony Orchestra.
https://www.bowdoin.edu/profiles/faculty/glopez/index.html
Our Piano Festival honors the memory of Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham, founder and first chairperson of Ogunquit Performing Arts. A pianist herself, Betty studied, performed and taught piano for most of her life. She also saw to it that OPA acquired its spectacular Steinway Concert Model C Grand Piano, which still remains OPA’ greatest treasure.
Book online now!

13th Annual Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham Piano Festival Student Piano Recital
2019-10-06 15:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Showcasing Southern Maine’s finest young pianists!

The Festival continues on Sunday afternoon, October 6th at 3 pm with the Student Piano Recital, featuring the area’s best young pianists performing on OPA’s fabled Steinway. It is here that talented local students have the opportunity to perform on a world-class piano in front of a live audience. Admission to this performance is free.
The Festival honors the memory of Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham, founder and first chairperson of Ogunquit Performing Arts. A pianist herself, Betty studied, performed and taught piano for most of her life. She also saw to it that OPA acquired its spectacular Steinway Concert Model C Grand Piano, which still remains OPA’s greatest treasure.
Free parking for the performance is located behind the Dunaway Center.

13th Annual Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham Piano Festival Janice Weber
2019-10-12 19:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
International concert pianist Janice Weber returns to Ogunquit with a virtuoso evening entitled “A Night at the Movies”, offering a dazzling array of classic themes from classic films including The Birds, Dr. Zhivago, and a special salute to Hamilton!

World-class pianist Janice Weber returns for her fourth appearance in Ogunquit, this time bringing with her a dazzling program of Pops Classics associated with a variety of great films. This vivacious performer has a reputation for programing the most exciting and technically challenging selections – which will no doubt apply even to this lighter program!
“Ms. Weber is also a concert pianist of cliffhanging panache and daredevil brilliance.” Ellen Pfeifer, The Wall Street Journal
Tickets to this performance available now on this website. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ogunquit Camera Shop, Dunaway Center, Ogunquit Playhouse Downtown Box Office, and Ogunquit Welcome Center beginning three weeks prior to the performance. Free parking for the performance is located behind the Dunaway Center.
A summa cum laude graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Janice Weber has performed at the White House, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, National Gallery of Art, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. She has appeared with the Boston Pops, Chautauqua Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Hilton Head Orchestra, Sarajevo Philharmonic, and Syracuse Symphony. She has performed at the Bard, Newport, La Gesse, Husum, and Monadnock summer festivals and has twice toured China under the auspices of the American Liszt Society.
Her world premiere recording of Liszt’s 1838 Transcendental Etudes elicited acclaim from Time Magazine: “Liszt later simplified these pieces into the still ferociously difficult Transcendental Etudes (1852 version) for fear that no one else could play them. There may now be several fire-eating piano virtuosos who can execute the original notes, but few can liberate the prophetic music they contain as masterfully as Janice Weber does here.”
Ms. Weber recorded Liszt’s last Hungarian Rhapsody, one of only two living pianists to be included in a compendium of historic performances by nineteen legendary artists. This disc subsequently won the International Liszt Prize.

Her recordings also include Rachmaninoff’s complete transcriptions; with the Lydian Quartet, Leo Ornstein’s vast Piano Quintet; flute and piano works of Sigfrid Karg-Elert; and waltz transcriptions of Godowsky, Rosenthal, and Friedman.
Her Naxos recording of Leo Ornstein’s radical works introduced the charismatic composer to a worldwide audience. She is heard in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time on Ongaku Records and her newest disc, Cascade of Roses (Dorian Sono Luminus),features works of twenty-one composers from Adolf Jensen to Billy Mayerl.
She is a member of the piano faculty at Boston Conservatory and MIT.
Ms. Weber is also a published author. Her novels, most of which have something to do with music, have a worldwide following. She also produced the tones for Ivory, the worldwide bestselling virtual piano software.
She is a Steinway artist.
www.janiceweber.com
Our Piano Festival honors the memory of Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham, founder and first chairperson of Ogunquit Performing Arts. A pianist herself, Betty studied, performed and taught piano for most of her life. She also saw to it that OPA acquired its spectacular Steinway Concert Model C Grand Piano, which still remains OPA’s greatest treasure.
Book online now!

The Philadelphia Story
2019-11-03 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
The Philadelphia Story (1940)

In one of her most famous roles, Katharine Hepburn plays Tracy Lord, the daughter of a well-to-do Pennsylvania family in The Philadelphia Story (1940). The young socialite is about to embark on a second marriage and the lucky groom is George Kittredge (John Howard), a comparatively staid but extremely wealthy gentleman. Her first husband was C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) who is certainly more colorful than Kittredge if slightly less responsible. When Dexter makes an unexpected appearance at the Lord’s home on the eve of Tracy’s wedding, it is not so much to wish her well as to shield her from the prying eyes of an overly ambitious reporter (James Stewart) assigned to cover the nuptials.
The Philadelphia Story was based on a screenplay by Phillip Barry who wrote the play specifically for Katharine Hepburn. The actress was so impressed with the script she agreed to finance part of the stage production herself and did not draw a salary. She did receive a portion of the profits which were significant due to the play’s huge success on Broadway. This came at a critical point in Hepburn’s career which had faltered during the previous few years. In 1938, she was labeled “box office poison” by the Independent Theatre Owners of America after several commercial failures.
Realizing the potential of The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn purchased the motion picture rights to the property and approached Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, with a deal. She agreed to sell Mayer the rights to the property for the very modest amount of $250,000, in exchange for the authority to select her own director, screenwriter and cast. Securing control over the production, Hepburn chose George Cukor to direct. The two had worked together in Hepburn’s first film role, A Bill of Divorcement (1932) and then again in the 1933 version of Little Women.Hepburn chose Donald Ogden Stewart to write. He was a friend of Philip Barry’s and was a master at preserving an original play’s integrity when adapting it to the screen.
Hepburn approached Cary Grant for the role of Tracy’s former husband and Grant accepted on two conditions. First, that he receive top billing and second, that he be paid $137,000 which was considered an extremely generous salary at the time. Interestingly, upon receiving his salary, Grant donated the entire amount to the British War Relief Fund.
Hepburn had become interested in Jimmy Stewart for the part of the newshound ever since the actor had received accolades and an Oscar® nomination for his portrayal of an idealistic senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the previous year.
When the film was released, it broke the previous box office record held at Radio City Music Hall where it earned $600,000 in six weeks. It also proved that Katharine Hepburn knew how to deliver a hit when given the opportunity and was just the opposite of box office poison. The Philadelphia Story also did well at the Academy Awards® that year. The film earned 6 nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.
Jimmy Stewart scored a Best Actor Oscar to the surprise of many including the actor himself who stated that he had voted for Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath. Many thought the Academy was trying to make amends for not awarding Stewart the Oscar® for his role in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the prior year. by Mary Anne Melear for TCM

The Nutcracker
2019-12-01 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
The Nutcracker is Mikhail Baryshnikov’s breathtaking and critically acclaimed, Emmy* nominated production. This spectacular performance is danced by the magnificent team of Baryshnikov, one of the greatest classical dancers of the century, and Gelsey Kirkland, both showcased at the peak of their careers, with members of the American Ballet Theatre. The Nutcracker is the magical and lighthearted story of a small girl’s dream on Christmas Eve. Baryshnikov is the toy Nutcracker-turned-Prince in this exhilarating production that marked his initial and universally acclaimed choreographic effort. Gelsey Kirkland is little Clara, the dreamer, and Alexander Minz is Drosselmeyer, the wizard who conjures up the dream and eventually dispels it. Extravagant sets and costumes bring the beauty of this winter wonderland to life. The magical aspects will delight children, while the spectacular sets and performances will enchant and delight the child in all of us. Celebrated by critics and public alike, Baryshikov’s The Nutcracker delivers a brilliant and sparkling adaptation of the famous E.T.A. Hoffmann tale along with Tchaikovsky’s classic score – and showcases the athleticism and precision of Baryshnikov’s solo variations. The Nutcracker, a holiday perennial on network and public television, is a truly remarkable treasure that will be enjoyed by all for generations to come.
Text courtesy of Kultur.

Captain Newman, M.D.
2020-01-05 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center – Community Auditorium on the main floor, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Captain Newman, M.D. is a 1963 American comedy/ drama film, directed by David Miller, and starring Gregory Peck, Angie Dickinson, Tony Curtis, Robert Duvall, Eddie Albert and Bobby Darin. Peck’s Brentwood Production also co-produced the film.
The film is based on the 1961 novel by Leo Rosten. The book in turn was loosely based on the World War II experiences of Rosten’s close friend Ralph Greenson, M.D., while Greenson was a captain in the Army Medical Corps supporting the U.S. Army Air Forces and stationed at Yuma Army Airfield in Yuma, Arizona. Greenson is well known for his work on “empathy” and was one of the first in his field to seriously associate posttraumatic stress disorder (years before that terminology was developed) with wartime experiences.
In the film, Captain Josiah Newman is head of the neuro-psychiatric Ward 7 at the Colfax Army Air Field (AAF) military hospital, located in the Arizona desert in 1944.
Treating shell-shocked, schizophrenic, and catatonic veterans, the doctor takes a back seat to his patients in Gregory Peck’s portrayal as the conflicted Air Force psychiatrist. Now considered ahead of its time, the film focuses on the doctor’s plight as he struggles to help men driven over the edge by the horrors of war, all the while tormented by the thought that curing his patients will inevitably mean sending them back into harm’s way.
Using unconventional treatment tactics, Newman explains to a visiting VIP, “We’re short of beds, doctors, orderlies, nurses, everything … except patients.” Therefore, the doctor uses equally creative methods to recruit much needed personnel, including a new and very reluctant orderly Corporal Jackson Leibowitz, a wheeler- dealer from New Jersey (Tony Curtis).
Newman also takes great pains to court nurse Lieutenant Francie Corum (Angie Dickinson) on what she thinks is a date… until he asks her to transfer to Ward 7. After watching Newman’s handling of an emergency situation and other patients on the ward, Corum transfers in.
Peck was looking for a follow-up to his Oscar® winning performance as small- town lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) when he chose to star as Capt. Josiah Newman. The role bore more than a passing resemblance to his tortured general in Twelve O’Clock High (1949), which had brought him the New York Film Critics’ Award for Best Actor. But though the part may have looked good on paper, playing the eye of the film’s psychiatric storm inevitably meant giving up the focus to the doctor’s patients, in particular three tortured souls played, respectively, by Eddie Albert, Bobby Darin and a very young Robert Duvall.

All About Eve
2020-02-02 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center – Community Auditorium on the main floor, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
All About Eve is a 1950 American drama film written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, It was based on the 1946 short story “The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr.
The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star. Anne Baxter plays Eve Harrington, an ambitious young fan who manoeuvres herself into Channing’s life, ultimately threatening Channing’s career and her personal relationships. The film co-stars George Sanders, Celeste Holm, and features Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe, Thelma Ritter, and Marilyn Monroe in one of her earliest roles.
Zanuck’s first choice for the leading role was Marlene Dietrich, but Mankiewicz though her too artificial to being Margo to life. His choice was stage star Gertrude Lawrence, but her agent made several unrealistic demands. In desperation Zanuck placed a call to Bette Davis, then considered box-office poison after a string of flops. The two had not spoken in years, the result of a feud when she resigned as president of the Motion Picture Academy® in 1942. In fact, when he called her on the set of her current film, Payment on Demand (1951), she thought it was a prank. After convincing her he really was Zanuck and was offering her a role, he told her that she would have to have her costumes fitted and be ready to shoot on location in ten days. Once she read the script, she was more than happy to oblige.
As soon as word of her casting got out, Mankiewicz got calls from directors who had worked with Davis warning him that she would try to take over the picture. The one exception was William Wyler — who had directed her in Jezebel (1938), The Letter (1940), and The Little Foxes (1941). He congratulated Mankiewicz on his good fortune and assured him that he’d enjoy working with her, a prediction that proved correct.
20th Century-Fox set a record for Oscar® nominations with All About Eve that has been matched (by Titanic in 1997) but never beaten. Greeted with almost universal acclaim on its initial release, the film has become a classic whose lines, characters and story elements are now firmly entrenched in popular culture.

Out of Africa
2020-03-01 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center – Community Auditorium on the main floor, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
Out of Africa is a 1985 American epic romantic drama film directed and produced by Sydney Pollack, and starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. The film is based loosely on the autobiographical book Out of Africa written by Isak Dinesen, which was published in 1937, with additional material from Dinesen’s book Shadows on the Grass and other sources. The book was adapted into a screenplay by the writer Kurt Luedtke, and filmed in 1984.
The film tells the autobiographical tale of Baroness Karen Blixen (Dinesen’s true name), portrayed by Streep, and her time spent on a coffee plantation in East Africa in the early twentieth century. Blixen, in the film, marries Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and moves with him to Africa. The marriage is most unsatisfactory as he is a womanizer who eventually leaves her to take care of the plantation on her own. The Baroness meets a hunter named Denys (Redford), and the two begin an idyllic love affair.
The idea of adapting the Dinesen’s memoirs to the screen had been thrown around for decades before the project was finally picked up by Universal Studios. (Orson Welles and David Lean had both considered making the film, and Nicholas Roeg thought about making the film with Julie Christie starring as Karen.) Sydney Pollack was the one to produce the film in the 1980s, along with directing it.

Out of Africa was filmed on location in Africa using descendants of several people of the Kikuyu tribe who are named in the book, including the grandson of chief Kinyanjui who played his grandfather. Much of it was filmed in the Langata area near the actual Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. As Karen’s farmhouse was at the time of filming a part of a local nursing school, the filming took place in her nearby first house “Mbogani”, which is a dairy today. Her actual house, known as “Mbagathi” is now the Karen Blixen Museum. A substantial part of the filming took place in the Scott house and in a recreation of 1910s Nairobi built in an area of unoccupied land in Langata.
The film won 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Sydney Pollack), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Sound.

Stillson School of Irish Dance
2020-03-07 18:30 | S. Judson Dunaway Center – Community Auditorium on the main floor, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States

The Long, Long Trailer CANCELLED!!
2020-04-05 14:00 | S. Judson Dunaway Center – Community Auditorium on the main floor, 23 School Street, Ogunquit, ME, 03907, United States
The Long, Long Trailer is a 1954 American road comedy film based on a novel of the same name written by Clinton Twiss in 1951 about a couple who buy a new travel trailer home and spend a year traveling across the United States.
The film stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and features Marjorie Main, Keenan Wynn, and Bert Freed. The picture was directed by Vincente Minnelli, working from a screenplay by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich.
The Long, Long Trailer stars Lucy and Desi as an upwardly mobile couple who decide to buy a trailer so they can live together while his job takes him around the country. Thanks to their naivete in such matters, they end up with a huge 1953 36-foot Redman New Moon model, that costs five times what they planned. Their “seeing America” trip turns out to be a slapstick series of disasters, topped by Lucy’s foolish decision to hide a heavy rock collection in the trailer as Desi tries to maneuver a treacherous mountain road through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

At MGM, the same team that had made Father of the Bride (1950), and its sequel, Father’s Little Dividend (1951) – producer Pandro Berman, director Vincente Minnelli, and screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett – re-worked a non-fiction book about a middle-aged couple who spent a year traveling cross-country in a mobile home. By making them honeymooners, and making the husband Latin and the wife wacky, the script was perfect for the king and queen of television.
Arnaz, in fact, had tried to buy the rights to the book, but Berman had beaten him to it. At first, MGM executives wanted no part of it. because it was thought people would not pay money to see Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in a movie when they could watch the couple on television for free (I Love Lucy). Arnaz made a $25,000 bet with the studio that the movie would make more money than the current highest grossing comedy at that time (Father of the Bride, starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor, and also directed by Vincente Minnelli.) Arnaz won the bet.
