“Music Rooms of the Gilded Age”
Close Encounters’ Conversations With… series opens Sunday, October 11, 2 PM, at Ventfort Hall, Lenox, with Music Rooms of the Gilded Age. Harvey Rosenberg, professor of the History of Interior Design and Architecture at FIT/SUNY for 25 years, and frequent lecturer at Parsons, Pratt and the New School of Interior Design, offers a slide presentation and discussion of how European design principles were incorporated into the Berkshire “cottages” of the Gilded Age.
Ventfort Hall, an imposing Elizabethan-style mansion, was built in 1893 for Sarah Morgan, the sister of J. P. Morgan. Designed by the architects Rotch & Tilden, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and declared an official project of “Save America’s Treasures,” a Millennium program of Hillary Rodham Clinton and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It was one of the approximately seventy-five so-called “cottages” built in Lenox in the last century when the village became a popular resort and now home of The Museum of the Gilded Age. Located on spacious grounds in the heart of the village, it is partially restored and open to the public.
A series of intimate and stimulating conversations about music and ideas and an intrinsic part of the Close Encounters With Music season, Conversations With… has presented such notable speakers as writer and editor and WAMC’s “cultural czar” Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim fellow Judith Zaimont; pianist and author Walter Ponce; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s-book author R.O. Blechman; Academy Award nominee Daniel Anker; scholar/performer/multimedia artist Robert Winter; and former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton
Tickets for Music Rooms of the Gilded Age are $25 and include light refreshments. They can be ordered by emailing [email protected] or calling 800-843-0778.
Ventfort Hall is at 104 Walker Street, Lenox, MA.
Please join us for our concerts as well at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington:
Chopin in Paris Saturday, October 17, 6 PM
Soldier’s Tale: Holiday Concert! Saturday, December 5, 6 PM
A Night of Quartets Saturday, February 20, 6 PM
The Romantic Bach Saturday, March 20, 6 PM
Chopin and His Circle Saturday, April 24, 6 PM
Prague Spring—Czech Idyll Saturday, June 5, 6 PM
These six performances at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Tickets, $35 (and $40 for the June 5, 2009 concert) for adults and $10 for students, are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100, or through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778 or by emailing [email protected]. Subscriptions are $150 for a series of 6 concerts, $130 for seniors (65+). Please visit our website at www.cewm.org.
“A chamber music series on a par with anything heard at the height of the season. For this, we year-rounders are blessed.” —Rogovoy Report
“There’s a palpable mystique about these Close Encounters concerts.” —Berkshire Eagle
“STUNNER CLOSES SEASON! Though Hanani, Prutsman and Upshaw all performed with that rare combination of mutual understanding and technical finesse which makes for the most satisfying chamber music, Hanani deserves special recognition for his astute program choices.”
—Albany Times Union
“An all-star lineup…CEWM’s usual high caliber.” —Metroland
