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Archive for the ‘Anthony F. Hall’ Category

Love Letters to be Staged at Montcalm Restaurant, February 11 and 13

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Local artistic directors take to the stage for joint Valentine’s celebration

Mark Fleischer, the artistic director of the Adirondack Theatre Festival, and Lindsey Gates, founder of the Lake George Theater Lab, will present A.R. Gurney’s epistolary play Love Letters on Friday, February 11 at 8:00 pm and Sunday, February 13 at 2:00 pm at The Montcalm Restaurant in Lake George.

Here’s the press release:

It is usually summer when the Adirondack Theatre Festival of Glens Falls and Lake George Theater Lab of Bolton Landing perform, but this February the artistic leaders of these professional summer theatres have teamed up to offer audiences a Valentine treat: A.R. Gurney’s epistolary play Love Letters. Lindsey Gates, LGTL’s founding artistic director, and Mark Fleischer, ATF’s producing artistic director, will perform the Pulitzer nominated show Friday, February 11 at 8:00 pm and Sunday, February 13 at 2:00 pm at The Montcalm Restaurant (1415 U.S. 9) in Lake George. Seating is limited to only 50 people per performance. Tickets are $25 and include a champagne intermission and post-show dessert reception. Those wishing to dine at The Montcalm before the show will receive a 10% discount. Reservations for the show can be made by calling The Montcalm at 793-6601. Proceeds from these benefit performances will be divided between the two companies and used to fund their upcoming summer seasons.

Called one of the best plays of the ‘80s by Time Magazine, Love Letters was first performed in 1988. It has since become a favorite of audiences and actors alike. Love Letters centers on the dutiful and staid Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and the eccentric and lively Melissa Gardner. The play unfolds as two actors read the characters’ letters. The audience experiences Melissa and Andrew’s unique, 50 year friendship and romance through the notes, postcards, letters, and holiday greetings they wrote one another starting at the age of seven through boarding school, college, military service and beyond. The play captures a world gone by, where letter writing (not emails and tweets) were a vital form of communication – especially between men and women.

Love Letters is ATF and LGTL’s first joint project. While approaching their missions differently, both are committed to developing new works for the theatre. Gates credits the success of both companies to their audiences. “Something exciting is happening upstate. I have long felt that the communities of the Adirondacks are excellent audiences for new and current work. Through the intersection of local audiences and professional artists, our two organizations have helped redefine the expectations for summer theatre.” Gates says that her appreciation for Fleischer’s artistic leadership fuels her desire to collaborate with ATF. “Watching Mark assume the leadership of ATF with incredible style and success has been inspiring. I’m a huge fan of his work (Ordinary Days in particular) and I’m motivated by his ability to connect with his audiences. I for one am hoping that this is the beginning of an energetic partnership both with Mark and between our organizations.”

Gates has performed in several LGTL productions. ATF audiences know Fleischer for his directing. While this will be Fleischer’s local debut on stage, it is not the first time area audiences have seen Love Letters. ATF’s first production was a benefit performance of Love Letters in 1995 starring the legendary Jason Robards and Elaine Stritch. Fleischer is quick to point out that by selecting Love Letters he recognizes that he and Gates have big shoes to fill. “Both Lindsey and I wish we had seen that performance which is now a part of local theatre legend. I know it must have been an electric evening. While we are professional theatre artists, we are not comparing ourselves to Robards and Stritch. We simply love Gurney’s play and with Valentine’s Day approaching, we wanted to share it with the community.”

Tags: ATF, Lake George Theater Lab, Montcalm restaurant
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Hugh Allen Wilson Dies at Home in Bolton Landing

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

Musician, teacher and conductor Hugh Allen Wilson died on December 18 at his home in Bolton Landing.
Wilson was born in Bolton in 1925, the son of pianist Anna Wilson and Clarence Wilson.
A 1946 graduate of Yale, Wilson took pleasure in noting that he was the only member of his class never to have changed his address – he spent his adult life at Allenhurst, the house in which he grew up.
Wilson’s career in music began at an early age. He was appointed organist at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Lake George at the age of 14. “Had it not been for that experience, I might not have had the career I did,” Wilson once said. According to Wilson, he had just started to play the organ when his godfather, the Rev. E.M. Parrott, St. James’ rector, offered him a post when the church’s organist announced she would be spending winters in the south. “My mother made a deal with me and ‘uncle’ Ned that if I would take the job, she would send me to Glens Falls to study with Cecil Wright, the organist at the First Presbyterian Church,” Wilson once recalled. “I made rapid progress, and all in all, things went well,” he said. “In my second year, I had the good fortune to have Louise Homer Stires, the daughter of Louise Homer, in my choir.” Wilson also played the organ at Villa Marie Antoinette for Harry K. Thaw, the husband of Evelyn Nesbitt who shot architect Stanford White.
At Yale, Wilson studied with Paul Hindemith, Gustav Leonhardt and Marcel Dupre.
In 2009, Wilson was invited back to Yale to teach a Master Class on the three organ sonatas of Paul Hindemith.
Of all the musicians who have performed the three organ sonatas, Wilson was one of the few whose interpretation was informed by access to Hindemith himself.
“Hindemith heard me play the three sonatas, and yes, he made some helpful comments,” said Wilson.
In 1948, Wilson created the Bolton Music Festival and presented a series of four concerts at the Bolton Central School auditorium. Meyer Kupferman and choreographer Franziska Boas were among the artists who participated in the festival.
After receiving his BA from Yale, Wilson embarked upon a PhD in music at the University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; he left in 1949 to become the organist and music director at the Glens Falls Presbyterian Church, a post he held from 1949 to 1966 and again from 1986 to 2004.
Wilson also began teaching at Union College, where he remained until 1998. In addition to teaching music history, Wilson was director of the Union College Choir and the Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs.
In 1984, Wilson became the first music director of the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until his retirement in 1998.
After retiring from Union and the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra, Wilson became chairman of the Sembrich Opera Museum, on whose board he had served for many years.
Wilson once noted, “During the first third of the twentieth century, the “Big Four” at Lake George were Homer, Leopold Auer, Alma Gluck and the incomparable Marcella Sembrich, in whose studio in Bolton Landing, now the Sembrich Museum, many of the great operatic singers of the middle of our century – Lucielle Browning, Natalie Bodyana and John Charles Thomas, to mention a few – learned their craft.”
Wilson’s mother, Anna Wilson, was an accompanist for Sembrich and her students, and Wilson liked to say that as an infant he had teethed on Sembrich’s pearls.
Wilson was still a member of the Sembrich’s board at the time of his death, which was announced by the Sembrich.
In accordance with Wilson’s wishes, no funeral or memorial services have been scheduled, said Sembrich chairman Bill Hubert.