Codger’s column: A talent show
If Shelter Island ever decided to stage a talent show with world-class resident headliners, it might go something like this, according to Codger: Friday night, a superb concert by a gifted pianist/composer; Saturday night, a staged reading of a new play with a starring performance by an acclaimed singer/songwriter; and on Sunday afternoon, a revealing book-talk about his compelling memoir by an award-winning writer.
Sound like a plan? Well, it already happened on the last weekend in May. Three totally unrelated events, linked only by Codger and Crone’s presence as friends. Yes, this is a commercial.
The Opening Act. Friday. Bruce Wolosoff has been an Island treasure for some time although he mostly shines these days at The Church in Sag Harbor where he showcases the non-profit “Reflections in Music,” as artistic director. The organization’s mission is to soften the welcome to classical music for new audiences with accessible pieces and non-pedantic commentary often built around Wolosoff’s skill in using other artistic disciplines as well as infusions of blues and jazz.
The latest concert, with two violins and a cello, included early works by Beethoven, Vivaldi and Rachmaninoff as well as a glimpse of the 19th-century Paganini as a rock star in a flowing black cape storming up to the concert hall behind four black stallions. Wolosoff’s own performances, including of his own enchanting work, seem no less passionate.
Long-time Shelter Island residents, Wolosoff’s family includes three other future talent showstoppers, daughters Katya Wolosoff, a sculptor, and Juliet Garrett, a singer-songwriter, and wife Margaret Garrett, a highly-praised dancer/artist whose videos and paintings have been widely shown.
There has always been lots of music on the Island. Stars include the trumpeter and arranger Dick Behrke; bass player and jazz vocalist Dennis Raffelock; the happily ubiquitous Lisa Shaw and Tom Hashagen, the ever-beguiling Sara Mundy; and the beloved Island Jammers, ever-blessed for entertaining seniors. The Jammers include Chris Coyne, Erland Zygmuntowicz, John and Penny Kerr, Heather Reylek, Jim Preston, Wendy Clark, George Huhn, and Pastor Steve Adkison.
And don’t forget the Sweet Dulcimers, (Linda Betjemen is musical director) playing traditional folk music — sweetly — on the mountain dulcimer.
Second Act. Saturday. Loudon Wainwright III may be best known as a sardonic singer-songwriter of more than a score of albums (including the earworm “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road”) but his career as an actor spans more than a dozen movie and TV roles including three episodes of M*A*S*H as “the singing surgeon” Captain Calvin Spalding.
He was back on stage in Codger’s version of a talent show as a right-wing sign-posting neighbor in Joel Shoemaker’s play-in-progress, “Signs (This Land is my Land),” a staged reading at the Mandala Yoga Center in Springs for the Accabonac Theater Project.
Loudon has a forceful presence as a singer, especially in his hilarious, often painful confessional songs, and he brings that same control and complexity to his role as a liberal weekender’s seeming neighbor from hell (or Trumpland) whose smug cleverness masks some culture, wisdom and perhaps even possible common ground.
No mention of theater is possible without call outs for Lisa Shaw (again!) and Joanne Sherman in memory of their spectacular Island musicals, to John Kaasik, the amazing impresario of high school extravaganzas, and his resident artist, the cartoonist/painter Peter Waldner whose recent rendition of the monster Audrey II made Jaws look like a pet.
Act Three. Sunday. Tom Junod, who in Codger’s opinion is the best magazine writer in America, talked about his first book, “When I was a Youth I was Taught How to be a Man,” at the Pelligrini Vineyards in Cutchogue. His father, the rakishly handsome Big Lou, lived double, triple lives in Hollywood and Miami that choked the family home in Wantagh with secrets that Tom grew up to ferret out.
Tom’s complex relationship with his father makes an interesting counterpoint to the impact that Mr. Rogers, the TV star who helped raise so many children, made on him as an adult. Tom wrote about Mr. Rogers in Esquire and the Atlantic, spoke about him in a documentary and was a leading character played by Matthew Rhys in the film, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Tom Hanks played Mr. Rogers.
Two other Islanders have new books for summer reading if not future talent shows. David Browne’s “Talkin’ Greenwich Village” is a rich and absorbing saga of the music scene from the 50s into the late 80s. Susan Morrison’s “Lorne,” is a joyously juicy biography of the Saturday Night Live inventor, Lorne Michaels. Susan lives with Loudon, a musical guest in that show’s first season, in 1975.
While you’re reading all the books, you can root for editor Ambrose Clancy to quit nitpicking Codger’s commas, and finish his own next thriller.
