GUILFORD — On Sept. 5 and 6, Friends of Music at Guilford (FOMAG) will presents its annual Labor Day Weekend Festival with an evening concert in the Organ Barn on Kopkind Road (off Packer Corners Road), and an afternoon orchestra concert on the lawn at the Organ Barn. The event celebrates FOMAG's 50th season.
FOMAG, a community organization that offers a year-round season of concerts and other activities in Southern Vermont, is dedicated to the tradition of amateur musicians who perform music for the sheer love of it, and the presentation of work that otherwise would go unperformed, much of which was written by musicians living in Giulford.
Guilford resident Don McLean, who was there almost from the beginning, remembers how it all began.
Teacher Arthur Graham Down taught at Lawrenceville prep school in New Jersey and bought a summer home in Guilford in 1964. Although he was a member of the history department at Lawrenceville, Down was a dedicated amateur musician and needed an organ for daily practice when summering in Vermont. Because he didn't want to commute to Brattleboro to play on various church organs, he decided to get one of his own.
Down searched New England and found a tracker (mechanical) action organ in a Maine barn. In 1965, he had the instrument transported to Guilford, restored, and planted in a neighbor's barn. Built around 1897, probably for a church in Maine, the organ was restored in Vermont with a new pedal board by John Wessel and metal pipes by Anderson Organ Pipe Co. of Guilford.
Before returning to teach at Lawrenceville at the end of that summer, Down decided to dedicate his new organ with a recital for Guilford friends and neighbors. On a Sunday afternoon before Labor Day 1965, he performed before an audience of 30 a concert with an ambitious program of organ music ranging from Bach to modern repertoire.
Each year on the same weekend, the Sunday concert took place, with the gradual addition of voices and other instruments. When Down moved from Guilford in 1970, a group of his musical friends from the neighborhood he nourished started FOMAG to buy the organ and continue the concerts.
“Graham was delighted what we did after he left,” says McLean. “Although he was busy with his foundation work in Washington, he kept in contact with us.”
In 2000, Down came back to Guilford and performed at the Organ Barn for several more years. He intended to come to the 50th anniversary, but he died at his home in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 30, 2014, after attending a celebration of his 85th birthday, nearly one year before the upcoming gala organ concert.
After FOMAG acquired the instrument in 1975, Lawrence Nievin completed renovations on the organ in 1998, and he continues caring for the instrument to this day. Its keyboard was refurbished in 2007.
“The organ sounds really marvelous now,” says McLean. “The Friends recently have built a more purposeful enclosure for the organ and have weatherproofed the Organ Barn to keep out birds and other wildlife. Originally, the Organ Barn was a very primitive structure.”
The guest artist for this year's Organ Concert is baroque specialist Susan Summerfield, who will be appearing for the first time in the Organ Barn. She will perform a solo recital, “Traditions,” that will include some of Down's favorite organ works.
Her program includes pieces by J. S. Bach, Louis Couperin, and Pierre Dandrieu from the 17th to early 18th century; C. P. E. Bach at the beginning of the “classic” era (later 1700s); and 20th-century masters Darius Milhaud and Lou Harrison. Harrison's featured works include an homage to Milhaud and a four-part Summerfield Set. Summerfield draws connections between the baroque pieces and more modern counterparts using baroque elements in their creation.
Susan Summerfield is a professor of music and college organist at Saint Michael's College in Burlington where, in addition to teaching courses in music theory and music history of the baroque and 20th century, she coaches the chamber ensemble and offers private lessons in piano, organ and harpsichord. She also performs solo and ensemble concerts on all three instruments.
Admission to the organ recital is by donation. A cake, coffee, and champagne reception follows on the deck as weather permits.
On the following day at 2 p.m., conductor Ken Olsson leads the Festival Orchestra for the Concert on the Lawn, which has a program that also includes works in memory of Down: “Fanfare for the 50th” by Don McLean and Barber's “Adagio for Strings.”
“Without being drearily historic, we wanted to have some remembrances in this concert,” says McLean.
In addition, the orchestra will perform Mozart's Symphony #26, Gouvy's Petite Suite Gauloi, and a duet from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, with soloists Julie Johnson Olsson and James Anderson.
Celebrating music created in Guilford, the orchestra will perform Nick Humez's reorchestrated suite of some incidental music he wrote for the 1978 Monteverdi Players production of Alice, with original cast members McLean and his wife Evelyn reprising their roles.
“The Alice piece is an apt tribute to the anniversary because FOMAG has been noted for its unusual musical theater,” says McLean. “We do less recently because it is so expensive to put on now. The original Alice, a new musical based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, was a wonderful work.”
The Sunday concert will close with the traditional finale, a sing-in by musicians and audience of Randall Thompson's “Alleluia.” McLean says to bring a score if you have one or if not, you can borrow one at the concert.
Grounds open at noon for choosing your vantage point and picnicking on the lawn. Admission is by donation. Children are welcome with parental supervision, but no pets are allowed.
McLean said a lunch will be served for $10, which includes several homemade vegetarian salads, hard-boiled eggs, Grafton cheddar cheese, local tomatoes and fruit, artisan bread, and assorted beverages. Also, warm chocolate chip cookies and lemonade will be on sale before the concert and during intermission.
If the forecast is not conducive to an outdoor event, the lunch and concert will move to Broad Brook Grange at 3940 Guilford Center Rd., McLean said.
Other plans for this celebratory season include a presentation of a very special guest-artist concert at the end of September, New York Polyphony: “Faith and Reason” at the Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, and performances of recently rediscovered Bolivian baroque music at three of its 2015-16 concerts, says McLean.
The finale event of the season will be at a hilltop home with stunning views of the Guilford countryside on June 25, 2016.
“A Cappella a la Carte: A 50th Anniversary Party & Musicale” will include a potluck dinner followed by musical entertainment that features the Guilford Chamber Singers led by Tom Baehr in varied a cappella works, and the women's quartet Synchrony performing lively Period Swing Jazz. A special 50th Anniversary cake and potluck desserts cap the evening. Admission is free, with donations welcome; reservations are required.
“This is going to be an exciting year for us,” says McLean. “It is kind of astonishing that Friends is still active. Not a lot of arts organizations in the area have lasted as long as we have. I was on the original Windham Art Council, and when I see all the organizations it initially represented, very few remain. Behind Brattleboro Music Center, we are the second oldest in the area.”