Gandalf Murphy & the Slambovian Circus of Dreams TONIGHT, Saturday, at the Bellows Falls Opera House!

Bold, bewitching, enigmatic, gypsy-pirate-hillbilly-Pink Floyd-Cat Stevens-Dylan-esque performance by local cult legends, performing their "Very Slambovian Christmas" show. It'll put the holly in your ivy....

TONIGHT, SAT., DEC. 11th -- Show starts at 8pm. Reserved seating $15 - $20 - $25.  Doors open at 7:30pm.

Come down to the handsome, comfortable newly renovated Bellows Falls Opera House for a memorable musical winter wonderland.

Check out Gandalf at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCq9bGPAWUM

Reserve tix in advance til 4pm today at www.bfoperahouse.com

Tix available at the door too!!!!!!!!

Fanstastically eclectic, cool concerts next week at the Bellows Falls Opera House!!

Caravan of Thieves..high-energy, raw, sparkling gypsy folk that gets everyone's mojo working. Thurs. Dec.9th, be there!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNH20-mTQiA

Likewise, if you haven't seen Gandalf Murphy & the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, it's high time. Enigmatic, bold, lush musicality (from guitar and mandolin to theramin and accordian!), gorgeous lyricism and Joziah Longo's resonant voice and charismatic presence. They're a musical universe, a mental culture unto themselves, ...you'll never be the same again. And it's their "Very Slambovian Christmas Show", a musical extravaganza not to be missed!  Sat. Dec. 11th: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCq9bGPAWUM

Tix for both shows at: www.bfoperahouse.tix.com

Songs that unite past, present and future: Samirah Evans jazzes up weekend celebrations of Dr. King and the inauguration

Hope. Change. Possibility.

For a very long while, these words were largely missing from our collective lexicon in regards to the sociopolitical climate in this country and, since November, it's been clear that we were desperate to expand both our expectations and our vernacular.

One of the most eloquent and powerful indicators of any major shift in societal sensibilities is the arts. Artists not only record change but, by definition, they are agents of it as well, by virtue of the simple fact that they create. Painters realize the impossible with brushes and canvas. Writers conjure characters and situations with paper and ink. And musicians invent concepts and emotions with instruments and lyrics.

History has been documented by artists throughout the centuries and landmark moments, in particular, have provided inspiration for informative, galvanizing work that's filled museums, libraries and record stores with extraordinarily potent forms of creative expression.

So when jazz luminary Samirah Evans was asked by the good people at the Old Tavern at Grafton if she'd like to do a concert there this weekend and if she might have a particular concept for the show, it was a no-brainer like no other.

"'Do I have a concept?," she recalls thinking, "Yes, I have a concept!'"

With the show taking place a day before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and two days prior to Barack Obama's inauguration to the United States presidency, Evans quickly came up with the perfect title — "A Vision Realized" — and began putting together a song list that would exemplify the values and vision shared by these remarkable men.

Speaking by phone in between rehearsing and hearing from colleagues eager to join in, Evans talks about her motivation behind organizing this momentous celebration.

Pointing out the connection between Obama's humanistic sensibilities and Dr. King's dream of a country where children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, she explains, "Most people think you can fight it out but MLK put his life on the line for what he believed."

"And now there's Obama's willingness to feel that dialogue can make a difference," she adds. "Regardless of whether he's black or white, it's his impeccable character that's important."

The concert will celebrate present-day triumphs as well as reflect on struggles in the past. With a song list that includes impassioned comments on the Civil Rights Movement, such as Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," Evans has planned a concert that will give voice to the evolution of America's conscience on the issue of race up to the pivotal event that takes place on Tuesday.

"I want to sing songs that deal with social injustice and lead to the idea of hope and moving forward and possibility," says Evans. "Like 'Imagine' and 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' It's so hopeful: 'If birds can fly so can I.' You know, we shall overcome."

Having started her singing career when, fresh out of college, she took the stage at the legendary New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (this woman seems to do everything big and bold), Evans went on to become an acclaimed fixture in the New Orleans jazz scene. She has toured Europe, Asia and North and South America, playing alongside greats like B.B. King, James Brown and Irma Thomas, and has two exhilarating CDs out, including the freshly pressed, deliciously melodic and profoundly moving, "My Little Bodhisattva."

Listen to one bar of a Samirah Evans tune and her great success and stature in the jazz world instantly makes sense. With phrasing that inventively sculpts each line, whether she's singing a familiar standard or one of her many original compositions, and a timbre that ranges from sonorous to silken to sandy, Evans imprints her endearingly buoyant charm and palpable emotional depth onto every tune. Add to it a Klieg-light smile, a ready laugh and the energy of a kid in a candy shop and her lives shows are enigmatic and invigorating.

Considering that she hails from a place known for its vibrant energy, soulful style and robust appetite for pure, unadulterated fun, jazz is the obvious medium for someone like Ms. Evans and we Vermonters should count our lucky stars she's brought that mojo to our fair state.

After Hurricane Katrina, Evans and her husband Chris Lenois moved to his native Brattleboro and she has been building a new and enthusiastic fan base here ever since. Having bestowed her exuberant presence upon numerous clubs in the region, last September Evans kicked off the Vermont Jazz Center's concert season with a sold-out evening that featured saxophone maestro Charles Neville. She is clearly on the same sort of trajectory she experienced in New Orleans, making this concert — which takes place in the White Church across from the Old Tavern in Grafton at 3 p.m. Sunday — even more of a coup for local jazz fans.

With a dynamic, intuitive band comprised of bassist George Kaye, Bob Wiener on drums, pianist Miro Sprague and Dia Silverstein playing sax, along with special guests including indie-folk songstress Lisa McCormick, gospel-soul singer Moonlight and singer/guitar duo Cindy and Greg Hellmann, this event will pack a powerful punch, both musically and politically.

One of the most controversial songs slated is "Strange Fruit," a poetically ominous account of an Indiana lynching written by Abel Meeropol and made famous by Billie Holiday who first performed it at the Greenwich Village venue, Café Society, in 1939. House rules there were that when Miss Holiday performed this tune, with which she always ended each set, the entire staff was to remain motionless and silent, in reverence for the gravity of its message. At Sunday's performance we all will be, unquestionably, similarly attentive, particularly considering the monumental symbology to be found in the strides and struggles that have brought this nation from those somber days of oppression and hatred to Tuesday's awe-inspiring, unparalleled event on the steps of the Capitol.

Amidst her immense reverence for the sociocultural hardship and endurance that her concert is honoring, Evans emphasizes that joy is at its core. "I'll be singing New Orleans classics and choice standards as well," she attests. "I want it to be a show where everyone is welcome, an all-inclusive celebration of King's legacy and Obama's inauguration. They're songs that will leave people feeling really full and energized."

Tickets are $10 for adults (kids under 12 free), are tax deductible and benefit the Windham Foundation's Grafton Fund, which supports cultural programs in the area.

On a personal note: Due to an increase in other journalistic commitments, Sover Scene will appear on an intermittent basis going forward. I encourage everyone to stay in touch via the archive blog and by reading this phenomenal paper, Vermont's oldest, most eloquent and fearless family-run daily.

Change is good and, as with Ms. Evans' concert on Sunday, I too celebrate what I predict is a new chapter of hope and possibility for everyone!

Online: www.samirahevans.com
www.oldtavern.com
Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Take a cup of kindness: Reflections and resolution on New Year's Eve

I wouldn't call it schadenfreude, exactly, but at this time of year I feel an odd mixture of glee that I'm no longer a twenty-something urbanite scrambling to have the perfect New Year's Eve and a slightly amused empathy for anyone who is.

When I consider what Dec. 31sts used to be like during that phase of life, it all becomes one blur of so-so entertainment, insufferable crowds, mediocre food and, all too often, anti-climactic midnights.

There was the time my friends and I piled into someone's sprawling Cadillac and drove from San Francisco to Portland, Ore., to see The Pretenders, whose concert we'd just attended the night before, only to find a hand-scrawled note on the door of the auditorium saying the drummer had hurt his wrist and the show was canceled. When the clock struck midnight, instead of gyrating to "Brass In Pocket" and reveling in our collective cool under falling confetti and a spinning mirrored ball, we were drowning our sorrows in watery milkshakes at a low-lit diner.

One New Year's Eve I was scheduled to perform with my tap troupe in an opulent bar called Oz at the top of the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. It was a well-paying gig and, as I was putting myself through college, I needed to put the budget before socializing

Peeking out from the dressing room, I could see that already most of the couples looked as if they were ready to change partners and groups of friends appeared bored witless by each other's company. Upon discovering that the marble stage area was slick as ice, we had to simplify the entire show just to avoid breaking a limb and our cocktail-infused, companion-maxed audience seemed about as enrapt as if we were delivering a lecture on the plight of the rare and endangered crested newt.

I recall another end-of-year disappointment when my friends and I got soaked as we waited in pelting rain to get into a new club to see a ska band from London. After being herded through the front doors, we were informed that the dance floor was beyond capacity. We therefore heard, but did not actually see the band from a sardine-tin lobby and ended up heading home where we rang in the new year with tea and toast (the bread, not bubbly, variety).

Probably the strangest New Year's Eve I ever had was in New York City, when my boyfriend and I decided to forego the club scene and have a quiet meal instead. He'd dumped me just before Thanksgiving and right after Christmas announced he could not live without me, pleading with me to go on a relationship-restoration jaunt to his hometown for some earnest wining and dining (no doubt in order to help me forget said dumpage).

The restaurant happened to be at West 72nd and Central Park West, right across from the Dakota apartments where John Lennon had been shot just a few years before. After dinner, we stopped and gazed at the arched entrance to the imposing, Germanic stone building, in a sort of delayed stupor at the gravity of the sorrowful event that had taken place there.

Suddenly, a couple came rushing out of the Dakota's inner courtyard, crossing the sidewalk and maneuvering through parked cars and into the street. The gentleman, dressed in a banana-yellow three-piece suit, with a mop of black ringlets covering most of his face, instantly began whistling for a cab. He flagged one down in short order and hurriedly escorted the women, who seemed flustered and none too happy, into the back seat. He did not join her, however, but instead said something to the driver, swung the door shut and gave a quick knock on the trunk.

As we stood observing this odd scene, the man in the yellow suit remained motionless, arms hanging at his sides, gazing at the tail lights of the cab as they rushed away. With a heavy sigh of what could only be interpreted as extreme relief, he walked over to our side of the street and hailed another cab for himself, heading in the other direction. It was at that moment we realized we'd been watching Tiny Tim, he of the tip-toeing through the tulips with a ukulele fame.

The mix of sadness with celebrity sighting made an already peculiar New Year's Eve yet more disquieting. Any thoughts of heading to Times Square to join the churning masses had somehow been duly squelched and we took the subway back over to Brooklyn Heights where we were staying. Midnight had me reflecting on the dumpage, the Dakota and the resigned expression on Tiny Tim's face. I could relate, somehow, and knew that would be the last New Year's Eve I'd spend with my beau who, I realized before the first sip of champagne, wasn't the one for me.

Thereafter, my only yearly resolution has been to celebrate at home with people I love. A lovely tradition along those lines continues tonight, when I'm having a few close friends over for a low-key evening of good conversation, laughter, munchies and music while the kids play board games and compare Christmas loot. The husbands of two friends who'll be here are musicians and both happen to be playing at pubs around the corner, so at some point my beau and I will sneak out to make an appearance and toast the New Year amid the pulsing throngs of our tiny Vermont village.

Cozy soirees notwithstanding, this area offers some marvelously en masse revelry for couples and families at various venues, the highlight being a remarkably innovative and inclusive event at Stratton Mountain Ski Resort in Bondville.

Adults can join in on a group snowshoe hike from the lower slopes up to the Mid-Mountain Lodge for cocktails and then watch two spectacles take place right there on the mountain, both of which can also be viewed from the base lodge: a torch-light parade, in which up to 100 top skiers and snowboarders wind their way down the mountain bearing blazing torches, followed by fireworks that reflect dramatically on all that white stuff. There are special family dinners and kids' parties as well, so it's a wonderful way for everyone to ring in the New Year in true Vermont style.

Happy 2009, everyone. I have a feeling it's going to be full of good change. As the lesser known chorus of "Auld Lang Syne" says, "walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart."

Online: stratton.com

Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Tis better to shop Main Street: A holiday pitch for our local creative economy

In our current economic spiral and with the holidays upon us, it is human nature to gravitate toward the discounts, clearance sales and brand name bargains that populate the papers, airwaves and ether. Hip ads on TV, pithy jingles on the radio, coupons in the dailies and pulsating banner ads online all beckon us to save, save, save yet spend, spend, spend.

With the recent focus on big business blunders and Wall Street woes, however, I’ve begun to question just where our gelt is going and who, specifically, it supports. While I understand that the economy suffers when consumers stop consuming, I look around my own community and consider the plight of struggling sole proprietorships long before worrying about the big boys. I look at the painters, potters, poets, novelists, musicians, photographers, woodworkers, jewelers and other artisans who make a high-quality original works of art but who do not have massive marketing budgets to help sell their wares. I think of farmers who choose to keep their enterprises small and organic in support of the localvore philosophy.

I also marvel at the tenacity and spirit of these folks who could easily abandon their chilly studios for well-heated mega-stores, give up their understaffed shops and go work for a brand name competitor or trade their agricultural ideals for more lucrative crop management. That they choose to stay the course in the face of encroaching corporations is beyond commendable — it’s why we live here and why a day of supporting the economy in our historic downtowns is remarkably pleasant, pragmatic and community-building, if not soul-nourishing.

Still, I’m no saint. About once a year I give in to time and budgetary constraints and stock up on various staples in mass quantities at mega-retailers, all the while tsk-tsking my momentary failure to support small retailers the way I usually do. By the time I’ve made my purchase, whether it’s through an online purveyor of every houseware known to man or in a vast indoor city of avenues lined with oversized cleaning products gleaming beneath a fluorescent sky, I feel just a little bit unclean.

Commercial Goliaths are everywhere you look and, when it comes to warm and fuzzy packaging, it’s hard not to be intoxicated by the marketing machine and buy in, literally and figuratively, to well-crafted ad campaigns. The sorry truth of it is that, between economizing and our easily seduced psyches, at this time of year it’s hard not to get in the car or open a browser and head straight for the most obvious options.

Heck, every year I equip my kids for Vermont winters with “Made in Vietnam” outerwear, ordered from catalogue companies that have brilliantly managed to transform the cultural symbology of a down-home, homespun, rural lifestyle into multibillion dollar industries.

“Experience marketing,” as it’s known in the advertising world, has been part of the retail industry for a couple of decades now and it’s awfully hard to be impervious to its multisensorial charms. Coffee chains surround the customer with carefully chosen aesthetics, music and smells while clothing stores are furnished with enticing leather chairs, exotic plants and chic travel photography. It’s all beautifully staged and makes shopping slightly less tedious, I suppose, but the faux-congeniality that usually goes with the retail chain experience is what kills it for me.

Downtowns in New England offer something that no perfectly appointed brand boutique or bulk bargain mother ship can: a true feeling of participation, belonging and connection. When I head to Bellows Falls to do my errands — choose a bouquet at Halladay’s Florist, buy a new novel at Village Square Booksellers, stock up on light bulbs at J & H Hardware or pick up a CD at Bull’s Eye Music — merchants know me, they know my kids and they impart a feeling of comfort and familiarity that no amount of ersatz-atmosphere or über-selection can replace.

Sure, I could go to the nearby multinational warehouse store to pick up some pens and have a hundred choices but when I go to Snow & Lear office supply on the square, the value is more than just the pens. There’s Nancy, the ever-cheery clerk who will order anything I need and usually knows what it is before I do, most of the time the price is better than the competition and there’s parking right out front. Nothing can compete with that, nor the cute cartoons she clips and tapes to the counter or the paper clock hanging in the door that shows when she’ll be back from lunch.

Talk about experience marketing. This region has it oozing from every warmly lit storefront, jumbled window display and wry proprietor’s grin and it ain’t manufactured and it isn’t the result of millions of dollars of demographic research by suits in big offices. It’s just embedded in the character of the people who make our small towns and villages so unique.

At this time of year my gratitude for local merchants is especially great, whether it’s toy stores or galleries, bath shops or bakeries, and as I look at my list of holiday gifts to buy, I map out routes through nearby vintage downtowns, knowing that I’ll not only very likely find everything I need but I’ll be supporting the region as well.

My favorite thing to get for loved ones is, of course, art and Vermont is a goldmine of one-of-a-kind gifts that were made by hand by people who live and work in our communities. There are purveyors of locally made original items throughout the state, some focusing solely on Vermont artists, while others offer work by craftspeople from around New England.

One of my regular stops is Vermont Artisan Designs, in Brattleboro, where more than 6,000 square feet of space showcases paintings, glassware, jewelry, bowls, furniture and other assorted gifts, 75 percent of which are made in Vermont, with most of the remaining items from the surrounding region. Having opened 40 years ago, the store is testament to the vision and diligence of people like Suzy and Greg Worden, who have owned it for the past two decades and who are committed to supporting the work of high-caliber artists with the store, the fine art gallery upstairs and their online business, Buyvermontart.com.

Greg Worden reckons that, with prices starting at $5 and going into the thousands, it’s a great place for all holiday shoppers wanting to support their local craftspeople. “What we’re trying to do is maintain quality for the same price-point,” he explained recently, “so when you get something from here and see the paper it’s wrapped in, it’s something that everybody can feel good about.”

This type of one-stop shopping from an expansive collection of original works in a broad range of media also satisfies that urban/suburban experience that’s somewhat rare in rural areas. “It used to be a department store,” Worden attests, “so we’ve reclaimed that, in a way.”

There are numerous retail stores in the area offering a similarly pragmatic approach to supporting the creative economy, including Maplewing Artisans in Bellows Falls, the Jelly Bean Tree in Saxtons River, Frog Hollow Craft Center and the Artists Guild in Manchester, Gallery 103 in Chester and the Bennington Arts Guild, to name just a few. And don’t forget Vermont-grown, homemade foodstuffs that can’t be found anywhere else.

Give neighborhood arts and crafts merchants a look this year and ye shall come to holiday parties bearing beautiful gifts that will be loved by the receiver while simultaneously injecting much-needed fuel into our local creative economy. Be assured, too, that original art does not have to be expensive, as Worden will attest.

“Pewter pocket angels are the size of a quarter and they start at $5. You can even carry a pocket Buddha with you.”

Ah, the gift of serenity in the season of shopping. I’ll put that at the top of my list.

Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Music For Trains merges urban and rural arts: All aboard, or not, for a remarkable collaborative event

It started out like any other dinner party: great food, stimulating conversation, familiar faces and a few new ones. In the middle of dessert, however, four young men who were visiting from Brooklyn got up from the table and formed a loose huddle a few feet away. They stared purposefully at one another — silent, serious, focused. Then they started clapping.

What followed were several intricately punctuated, mesmerizing minutes of percussion that seemed to follow a distinct, mathematical pattern, starting out in unison and then diverging into complex arcs of clean eighth notes grouped into rolling cadences of two and three. It had a meticulous sonic architecture that was sparse yet riveting and we all became transfixed as the piece evolved into a hypnotic, collective pulse.

When, on a pristine dime, their clapping stopped, everyone else broke out in its more standard form, adding a few laudatory whoops and whistles. Having heard recordings of venerated composer Steve Reich's titular "Clapping Music" in the past, I was thrilled to have experienced it up close and in person. Something about the purity of hands against hands, its warm tone and inexorable resonance within a distinct compositional structure, makes this piece both primal and methodical. And these guys nailed it.

So Percussion, which has played much bigger houses including Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, has been recording and performing strikingly constructed, scrupulously paced and rigorously notated percussive music on various instruments such as marimba, bongos and even Melodicas since 1999 when they met at the Yale School of Music while studying with eminent percussionist, Robert Van Sice. Ranging in age from 25 to 31, Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Jason Treuting and Adam Sliwinski began bringing their remarkable sounds and sharp ears to this area six months ago, starting at that dinner party, which was hosted by Bellows Falls resident arts champion, Robert McBride.

This weekend heralds the culmination of what thereafter evolved into the visionary collaboration "Music For Trains," produced by Sara Coffey's Vermont Performance Lab in partnership with McBride's organization, the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project, along with the Brattleboro Museum and Arts Center and the Brattleboro Music Center.

So's four-week residency at VPL — which has involved collecting sounds and stories from the community in between teaching percussion and instrument-making workshops, as well as holing up in a barn studio for lengthy rehearsals — comes to fruition Friday and Saturday night in an innovative marriage of the region's vibrant creative economy with its rich industrial heritage. The stage? Train cars, train tracks and train stations.

Audiences' options include multimedia performances during brief train rides, live concerts at the Bellows Falls depot and alongside Brattleboro's former depot, which houses the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, as well as film events at both ends of the trip. In addition, BMAC arranged for sculptor Ahren Ahrenholz to facilitate on-site constructions of massive instruments made of found industrial objects at each station. At the center of it all is sounds — recorded, made in the moment and heard via various technological formats.

"Music For Trains" will be an amalgam of So Percussion's reverence for the beauty of every day noises, whether human, environmental or mechanical, and the artistic innovations, fearless resourcefulness and indefatigable planning skills of Coffey, McBride and the folks at BMAC and BMC.

When I spoke with Eric Beach, So's youngest member, it was evident that this project has been infused with mutual admiration and inspiration throughout.

"Sara Coffey and Robert McBride are by far the greatest strength of the project," enthused Beach. "They have to be the most connected people in all of Vermont, maybe the most connected people I've ever known. We've done things similar to this before, but we've never seen such dedication as we have from these people."

Case in point, on top of arranging So's residency itself and countless logistics with various entities, including Vermont Transit, Green Mountain Railroad and Amtrak, Coffey procured small electronic devices called Playaways for train passengers to use on board and take home afterwards. The musicians themselves are energized by the way this high-tech component will augment the audience's involvement.

"We recorded two pieces, mostly electronic ambient music that Jason composed," Beach explained, "Then we layered it with sound samples. Trains are social, but oftentimes people have personal experiences on them. Everyone has vivid memories of trains, they stare out windows, think about their lives and we want to amplify that process."

Not surprisingly, Coffey, too, is exhilarated by this ambitious venture. "Not every artist is cut out for this kind of project," she commented recently. "But everyone in So Percussion is smart, talented and flexible. From the get-go, they've really gotten it that it's connected to communities and that they have a residency to make work. Rural communities can serve as a wonderful lab for artists and the making of new work that is not created in a vacuum."

McBride concurred. "One of the interests I have as a director of a nonprofit in a small rural community is to convey the importance of being able to put a project like this together through partnership," he attested. "In bigger cities, often artists' work falls safely into the art ghetto or the gallery/music scene. When they come to a small town they have a chance to work with the community at large, so it is a win-win."

Just prior to each train station concert, the musicians will be interacting with the local setting itself, using found materials as resources for constructing massive instruments, such as blocks of wood and huge metal pipes.

"One instrument will be a diatonic set of pipes — a fencepost-a-phone," laughed Beach, "It has a sound of huge church bells and crazy overtones like chains and small sounds. It'll transition seamlessly with pre-recorded sounds."

"We're conscious that we'll be playing in front of a huge rail car," he continued. "We can't just ignore the industry and machinery of rail yards, we have to match the scale with our own music."

I mentioned a John Cage piece I once saw the San Francisco Symphony perform during which the musicians sat motionless and silent for nearly an hour. The sounds in the concert hall — common occurrences like muffled coughs, creaking chairs and distant traffic — became the music itself.

"This is like what Cage did," Beach avowed, "where everyone is involved and tiny sounds become really beautiful."

Such direct literalism in modern music is nothing new and yet the dynamic vision of young groups like So is injecting fresh energy into the form, whether deemed minimalist, ambient or process music.

Like the very work of their mentors, So's performances this weekend defy categorization. Concert, sculpture, performance piece, site-specific, kinetic docu-orchestration-in-the-making — "Music For Trains" is a sensorial journey framed around the visual, historical and metrical might of trains, whether you actually board one or not.

It is a symbiotic exchange of astounding organizational ingenuity, expansive theatrical thinking and rare musical virtuosity, resulting in a creative alliance that bridges communities, cultures, ages and arts. It's my bet that there'll be as many train buffs as music fans there, each just as wowed by the events' caliber and originality as the other.

Out of curiosity, I found Reich's notations for "Clapping Music" replete with his suggestion that each player choose the same timbre, using either cupped or flat hands so the "parts will blend to produce one overall resulting pattern." I was struck that, with its rows of beamed eighth notes above and below each pared-down stave moving across the page, the pattern of the music on the page itself had the appearance of something I'd seen before.

Then it hit me: train tracks.

Online: www.musicfortrains.com
www.sopercussion.com
Annie: www.annieguyoncommunications.com

Familiar faces and fresh sounds: Folk-rock luminary Steve Forbert joins Roots On the River line-up

Last June, as my friends and family and I sat enjoying Fred Eaglesmith's sardonic commentary in between songs at what was my seventh Roots on the River experience, I finally figured out what this four-day music festival in Bellows Falls reminds me of every year.

With its vivid cast of characters, entertaining banter, colorful stories, high-caliber performances and sometimes surprising connective tissue binding these tales and talents together into one extraordinarily satiating creative marathon, it's a bit like a Robert Altman film but without quite as much drama.

The starring role is masterfully played by Eaglesmith, of course, whose astute, salty sensibilities, raggedly beautiful lyrics and working man's heroism generate a crowd and culture that's impossible to define yet refreshingly distinct. While the roster of artists is a bit different every year, it's a given that the stage will be graced by consummate musicians with their own brand of songwriting and that by the end of the weekend the audience's musical tastes will have cross-pollinated and grown exponentially.

This event is something of an up-close and in person YouTube meets iTunes but with good eats, grass between your toes, great company and no banner ads. There's a delicious immediacy and accessibility about music festivals and ROTR seems to be particularly indulgent for the typical avid disciple. I've been known to jump up and buy a newcomer's CD before the end of the first amazingly good song and very often on my way to the merchandise booth I'll run into one of my longtime favorite musicians and stop for a quick chat. Fortunately, several of them are returning this year for another eclectic Roots on the River powerhouse line-up.

Tonight at 7:30 p.m. two of the region's most beloved singer-songwriters play the Bellows Falls Opera House, with Mark Erelli opening for and later accompanying Lori McKenna, both touring on exquisite albums that came out last year.

The festival revs up again at noon Friday, with an open mic at Boccelli's Café in downtown Bellows Falls and at 4 p.m. The Lonesome Brothers and The Clayton Sabine Band play across the street at the Farmers' Market. Then on the main stage under the Big Tent a couple of miles north, the Lonesome Brothers return at 7:30 p.m. followed by The Bottle Rockets and Fred Eaglesmith & The Flying Squirrels.

Saturday is the day to bring the whole kit and caboodle — camping chairs, blankets, cameras and kids — and settle in for 10 hours of top-notch country, folk, Americana, bluegrass, roots and rockabilly in a grit-steeped musical epic studded with glimmering guitars, world-weathered poetry and well-hewn voices, both comfortably familiar and entirely new. There's space to roam outside the Big Tent in between sets and, new this year, a Kids' Tent where the little tykes will be fed, watered and entertained while Mom and Dad soak up the earthy, original sounds of the Roger Marin Band, the Starline Rhythm Boys, Eilen Jewell, Sarah Borges, Steve Forbert, George's Back Pocket, Robbie Fulks and Fred Eaglesmith closing out the night.

Hold on, did I say Steve Forbert? He of the early '80s, boyish singer-songwriter on steep trajectory, "Romeo's Tune" fame? Why, yes, I did.

Forbert is joining Fred and friends for the first time this year while touring on his new CD, "Strange Names and New Sensations", and his presence at ROTR is sure to broaden the weekend's aural landscape and audience demographic yet further.

Since becoming one of the fastest rising folk-pop stars in the late '70s with the success of his first two albums, "Alive On Arrival" and "Jackrabbit Slim" — and having being laden with the expectation of becoming the "next Dylan" — Forbert has continued forging his own creative identity, living in Nashville, releasing more than two dozen records and touring with songs about life, love, hurt and hope, for devoted fans around the globe.

In his own unassuming yet assiduous way, Forbert helped an entire decade redeem itself, staying authentic and humble amidst punk posturing and bloated arena rock of the '80s and this purity of spirit prevails on his latest collection, albeit with a sharper lyrical edge than usual and a nicely stone-washed voice.

In "Baghdad Dream", his news-weary disdain for what the government is doing in Iraq comes through in bluesy hooks, guitar twang and lines like "It's enough to make you scream, what a well mismanaged scheme, Mr. Rumsfeld calls the shots and we all get what we got, oh the Baghdad Dream."

Other more ruminative tunes reflect Forbert's inner growth, revealing both regrets and acceptance of life's harsh lessons, as in the melodious and astute "Thirty More Years" and "Middle Age."

"Simply Spalding Gray" is a poignant composition built on ripened, stream-of-consciousness poetry, the kind of meditative veneration that can only come from a proficient writer who's got a few decades of experience from which to draw: "Swimming To Cambodia, Monster In a Box, this dude just flippin' sits there and they film him while he talks, they're ain't no sex or violence, might not float your boat, a water glass, a table, and a page or two of notes."

When I caught up with Forbert recently, I asked if reading poetry is part of his motivation as a songwriter.

"I couldn't carry on a very lengthy dissertation about poetry," he said. "But I like Worsdworth and Poe. My goal is to just keep the quality up — some of these songs I hear on the radio aren't even songs at all."

Regarding the evolution of the music industry over the three decades since his career began, Forbert was equally succinct. "I just admire people that can do a lot with a little. I wish we had more of that because you get so many big bombastic productions. Less is more sometimes."

Forbert's candor and viewpoint reminded me of what Fred Eaglesmith had said when I spoke to him prior to ROTR '06.

"The world is feeling really decadent these days, you know, everyone has too much money," Eaglesmith avowed, "and I was feeling decadent, like 'This is just gross, I'm out here with a six-piece band and a tour-bus and I'm singing songs about little people leading simple lives and I was starting to feel like it was all too big. You know so many bands are all 'bling-bling' now, so I just thought, I'm gonna go really small."

That credo is precisely what makes Forbert's presence at this year's Roots on the River a great fit. The folks who play this festival share simple, straightforward sensibilities and their mutual admiration spills into the audience until the atmosphere becomes positively familial and as comfortable as an old, well-made armchair. With Forbert adding his intelligent lyrics, emotive delivery and sage perspective to the mix, this year's crowd is going to be edified, entertained and delighted to hear a familiar troubadour's dulcet tones again.

Reverence will be flowing in every direction throughout the weekend, with a particularly notable absence at the center of it all, that of Eaglesmith's longtime comrade, mandolin and harmonica player, Willie P. Bennett, who passed away this past February. Bennett was cherished by ROTR devotees and his sweet smile, wry humor and luminous music will be terribly missed, most acutely at Sunday's more intimate acoustic show, which takes place at the stately Rockingham Meeting House.

Renowned Louisiana singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier, whose heartrending lyrics and resonant guitar glow in the cavernous hilltop colonial, will open for Fred Eaglesmith and the Flying Squirrels, who can always be counted on to rattle the tall windows with irreverent songs about rodeos, liquor and big ass garage sales as well pierce the breezy silence with plaintive tales of tired migrant workers, aging cowboys and broken hearted truck drivers.

The collective musicianship at Roots on the River is a rare convergence of masterful songwriting, hard-earned wisdom and fierce creative independence, with regrettable absences, new faces and old friends shifting this ever-evolving, always invigorating four-day tunefest.

And, like many of his cohorts, Forbert will be keeping it simple, with just a guitar, maybe a water glass and a page or two of notes.

Online: www.vermontfestivalsllc.com
Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Indie glitterati in our own backyard: Pavement's Stephen Malkmus scorches MassMoCA

Since most major musical artists who come through this area are roots, rock and singer-songwriter luminaries gracing the stages of outdoor festivals or restored opera houses, it's easy for us indie/punk/alt disciples to assume that the only way to hear masterfully edgy, artfully erudite and mind-scouringly thunderous favorites is to head to Boston or NYC.

For those of us entrenched in a non-clubbing phase of life — raising children, cultivating careers and grumbling when the satellite signal scrambles a Jon Stewart rant — it's no mean feat to mobilize our multitasking selves into the city, even for venerated alt royalty. So, instead, we blast Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Coldplay or The Clash in our kitchens while making pasta for the kids.

A few years ago, however, I discovered a mini-indie mecca, of sorts, right under our noses just a half hour south of Bennington. It turns out that MassMoCA — North Adams' spacious, innovative haven of heavy-hitting high art — has a fantastic music series and two über-mod concert venues that regularly host some of the best indie music going.

In the nine years since Mass MoCA opened, numerous darlings of the genre have inhabited its stages, including Yo La Tengo, Ollabelle, They Might Be Giants and Freedy Johnston. With the upcoming line-up boasting Son Volt, Clem Snide, Gutbucket and The Teenage Prayers, we rural indie-ites are mighty fortunate that Mass MoCA is a stop on a lot of national tours.

Their Alt Cabaret series takes place in the more intimate Club B-10 while heavy hitters play the museum's 800-capactiy Hunter Center, a cavernous black hall which is also the site of popular dance parties that always have imaginative themes like Retro Soul, Bollywood or tomorrow's Zydeco fest with C.J. Chenier.

Last Friday, the Hunter had a personage on its stage considered by indie brethren everywhere to be one of the masterminds of the entire genre. Coming off three sold-out New York City shows, Stephen Malkmus — co-founder of the seminal 1990s band Pavement — played two of the most adroit, dynamic, incandescent hours of live music I've heard in years (told you we're lucky) and, with his superlative current band, the Jicks, making his songs gleam yet more blindingly, it was indie/punk/alt paradise.

Malkmus, a songwriting demi-god and demon guitarist, was as savvy and roguish as when I saw Pavement during its final tour in 1999, bangs drooping down over a pale, narrow countenance, oversized T-shirt and skinny arms fiercely wielding various axes. Hailing from suburban sidebar, Stockton, Calif., Pavement became — counterintuitive as it sounds — eminent pioneers of independent music, lodging lo-fi principles, smart, wry lyrics and unapologetically fractured compositions into the hallowed lineage of alternative rock.

Malkmus' credibility is in his profoundly dexterous, consistently defiant departure from formal songwriting templates and equally muscular yet breathtakingly nuanced command of his instrument. I was glad to find that — touring on "Real Emotional Trash", his fourth solo album — he's still blazing an authentic, unconventional trail, crafting tunes that cannot be categorized beyond that they are simply his.

Every cut on this disc is strong enough to withstand any treatment (Malkmus' writing has always passed the solo acoustic test in my book), but the powerhouse force of the Jicks catapults each of them into a sonic stratosphere, with Mike Clark on keyboards, Joanna Bolme on bass and indie guru in her own right, Janet Weiss, on drums. The sound of this CD has me convinced that The Velvet Underground, Deep Purple and Neil Young's "Live Rust" have been pulsing through Malkmus' iPod lately, with tectonic bass lines that rumble and pop like an English engine, acidic keyboards lilting and liquefying, and behemoth drumming that rends the sky wide open.

"Dragonfly Pie," one of several prog-drenched tunes, is a fortress of bristling guitar, shaggy bass, synthesized striations and controlled avalanches of percussion that, as a musician pal of mine puts it, "has a lot of pudding." Blistering waves of Malkmus' searing, single coil swagger on guitar propel his vocals from earnest wordsmithery to falsetto choruses to finally screeching the final lines in a refreshing nod to Pavement's more raucous moments.

"Baltimore," another bottom-heavy beauty, roars and rages like a woolly mammoth in heat between storyteller lyricism and dreamy harmonizing, cascading into the kind of complex power-jam for which Malkmus is known. As someone who's basically allergic to anything remotely resembling extended, improvised solos or jams, I've always savored the way Malkmus manages to infuse his songs with tight, instrumental forays in just the right dosages, long before anyone indulges or ODs.

Every ingredient in a Malkmus concoction is meticulously measured, binding melodious, sometimes familiar patterns, palettes and phrasing together the way a chemist carefully weighs his powders and potions, inventing potent elixirs whose effects are exponentially greater than the sum of their parts.

"We Can't Help You" starts out sounding like "The Weight" at half-speed, but moves away from The Band into its own temperate idyll, floating contemplative phrasing over a calm, knowing cadence and wistful key changes. The album's sumptuous 10-minute title song hitches a ride on the brooding mare of Neil Young's "Powderfinger," ducks into Hendrix's psychedelic "Eden" and then charges into an Allman Brothers corral before jumping off and crossing the finishing line by its own untethered volition.

Likewise, the twin-guitar thread that weaves through "Walk Into the Mirror" pays homage to Television's Richard Lloyd, while "Cold Son" is a ripened sequel to Pavement's "In the Mouth a Desert" from its 1992 debut album, "Slanted and Enchanted."

Two of the strongest tunes from the new CD were yet more exquisitely sculpted in concert, the band nimbly displaying its collective genius from opposite ends of the emotive spectrum. "Gardenia," a whimsical, Kinks-fueled skip through pop history veered from airy, carefree '60s intonations into shameless '70s noodling, blowing sugary bubbles while still spitting a few sardonic daggers. And "Out of Reaches," one the most crushingly exquisite songs Malkmus has ever written, had the crowd riveted, with Clark's glowing Three Dog Night organ-playing, Weiss' wrenching, syncopated waves of drum rolls, and Malkmus' obtuse verses putting a decided lump into this ex-punk's throat.

I can see you hiding out
shrinking like the daisy that you were born to be
you did your thing and now you deserve
the voltage was the best thing that I ever knew
out, out of
reaches out

Blunt, wry and smoldering to a close with guitar that splinters into ruefully frayed edges before washing over a hopeful "I know the tide will turn" hymn, this languid, voluptuous opus aches and pierces deeper than anything else in Malkmus' fertile songbook.

As compelling as Malkmus himself was during the show, Weiss was utterly mesmerizing, constructing the armature of every song by peppering buttresses and beams of percussive iron with perfectly molded empty spaces. Displaying the same prowess that made her famous as a member of Sleater-Kinney, Weiss was more brutally eloquent than ever, spewing clouds of propulsive vigor from her kit, then backing away at precisely the right moments, allowing Malkmus' poetry to step forth, Bolme's bass to darken the mood or Clark's keyboard to paint a fresh canvas of air.

Stephen Malkmus & the Jinks isn't just a top-notch indie band, it's a musical think tank, mining resonant, evocative hooks, textures and soundscapes from the past few decades and soldering them together into beautifully eclectic, scrupulously structured songs that are enigmatic, thorny and sublime.

Standing in MassMoCA's sea of hipster newbies, wide-eyed latecomers and balding diehards, whose ages spanned 16 to 60, there was something fortifying about seeing Malkmus — a fellow 40-something parent of two — still bestowing impenitently fearless, expansive music upon audiences that are just as fervent as they used to be. Nice to know some things never change.

Online: www.massmoca.org

Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Haale-lujah: Mesmerizing singer rocks Bellow Falls

Condi Rice has met her musical match in Haale — the Bronx-born, Iranian-American singer who's been gathering a devout following here and across the country for the past few years with her distinctly diplomatic, transnation-building sound. And, like so many immigrants and their descendants, Haale (as in "jala"-peño) is fearless.

At last year's Bonnaroo Music Festival, there she was playing to tens of thousands of concertgoers in the middle of Tennessee alongside musicians such as The Police, The Flaming Lips, The White Stripes and Lily Allen, all the while happily educating her audience on the difference between a sitar and a setar.

In sewing together the various elements that make up her signature style, from Persian poetry to arena rock bravado, she is helping to redefine the very notion of world music. Though some of the greatest rock'n'roll ever made has come from the basic guitar-bass-drums triumvirate and "baby-don't-leave" lyrics, this talented trio regularly pushes words and music across emotional, intellectual and geographic borders with diverse instruments, eclectic themes and enthralling, if not edifying, results.

Take the song "Chenan Mastam"— my favorite cut on her new CD, "No Ceiling"— and, in particular, this description in the liner notes: "'Masti' is a state of ecstasy and intoxication. It's a feeling of serenity, connection and love, our natural state of being according to many Persian mystical poets. 'Chenan Mastam' means 'I'm so mast' or 'smashed on the Great Big Everything,' as Kurt Vonnegut once said."

Hold on … Vonnegut? Yup, so then one has to consider the full quote itself, which comes from a reference he made to children at play in the preface to his 1987 novel "Bluebeard": "They get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks, or echoes or funny sounds from the voice box or banging on a drum and so on."

Add to that a few intriguing morsels about Haale's myriad influences — who range from theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, sage Iranian philosopher and musician, Ostad Elahi, and renowned American Imagist poet, Hilda Doolittle, known as H.D. — and you get the idea that Haale isn't your average rock star.

On Saturday night, however, when she and her bandmates shake up the Bellows Falls Opera House, her particular brand of star power will become evident the moment she takes the stage. Commanding the spotlight with the confidence of a seasoned icon, whether wielding an electric guitar, traditional Persian instruments or just a mic stand while in the throes of a powerpop crescendo, Haale is a consummate professional who is wise and worldly as well.

When we spoke earlier in the week, her clarity on everything from politics to purpose was manifest. "I don't believe in war and I think that we know when we look at a family unit or a small community," she asserted. "We know violence isn't a solution to anything and also on a global scale. We should evolve past that."

At the suggestion that music can bridge chasms between two nations, she was ardent. "Exactly. If anything can heal, music and art can. I feel fortunate to be in the world of music and, being from two cultures, I guess I'm inherently a bridge. I want people to come to the shows and enjoy the music and feel the beauty of both cultures and see how wonderfully they integrate."

"No Ceiling," her lush, sonorous debut album, is a vibrant immersion into that amalgam of musical sensibilities, with fresh textures, temperatures and tones not often juxtaposed against traditional guitar riffs and stadium decibels. Haale and her skillful comrades deliver all of it in one invigorating ocean of sound that weaves other genres as well — grunge, folk, alternative, African, even spiritual music — into a cohesive, potent cocktail of flavors.

With Matt Kilmer on percussion, including cajons, djembe, floor toms and cymbals, and cellist Brent Arnold providing deep, cavernous tones throughout the CD, this is an exotic collection of original tunes that manage to strike a compelling balance between ancient and modern, East and West. Binding it all together is Haale herself.

"Off Duty Fortune Teller" showcases the luminous, slightly girlish core of her voice and lucid story-telling skills, all buoyed by an unapologetic splash of phrasing from The Beatles' magical mystery paint box. Shades of raspy blues temper whimsical lines in what is a sweet-and-salty nod to "I Am the Walrus," one of Haale's many dips into '60s psychedelia. Her sound is all her own, charging forth from whispers to wails to meditative chants, but with distinct hints of Grace Slick's soaring delivery, Joan Osborne's melodic grit and a touch of Heart at their fierce "Barracuda" best.

The songs are almost sculptural, shaped and molded by strong lyrics and surreal auralscapes. In "Zero To One," Pink Floydian warnings and bleak, unstructured spaces render a raw dreamscape roiling with anguished moans, atonal murmurs and surreal imagery that reads like über-obtuse haiku:

Everything is surprising from zero to one
Where were you hiding?
The empty house just saw the sun

"Middle of Fire" grows from the rich poetic soil of Patti Smith's songbook, specifically "Dream of Life," and the gorgeous lament "Hastee," based on a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad, one of Iran's most celebrated female poets, is yet more hypnotic.

One recurring intoxicant is Haale's nimble work on setar. With roots going back to the tanbur, a pre-Islamic Persian lute, it has a small, fig-shaped belly and a long, delicate neck spanned by 4 strings — c, c, g and c. The tremolo drone it emits is known as a "shorr," which translates to "the pouring of water," and is lighter and brighter than the sitar.

"I use it for its timbre as a rhythmic instrument," Haale said, "but I'm not classically trained on it." Her overall evolution as a musician, in fact, was not typical either. "I was studying biology at Stanford and during my time there I realized 'Wow, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.'"

Raised by Iranian parents who emigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago, Haale was on a path more academic than artistic. "I didn't pursue music as a child, but then a friend gave me a guitar," she explained. "And I always wanted to be a singer."

It is in the context of her Persian singing that Haale achieves her most primal, intuitive vocalizations, reaching beyond those sung in English with dazzling authority and moving, earthy resonance.

"Ay Dar Shekasteh," set to reflections on the metaphysical by 13th-century Persian mystic Rumi, pulses with ecstatic praise and percussive energy, eloquently illustrating why the setar was originally reserved for devotional or "djamm" gatherings and why Sufi mystics play it in their liturgical ceremonies today.

Motivated by a long list of great minds and talents, Haale has also collaborated with a number of celebrated contemporary musicians, including David Byrne, who invited them to perform in his Carnegie Hall shows last year. All of them, past and present, fuel her work and her philosophies.

"They're all people who were and are authentic creators and thinkers, taking their world seriously enough to make better and better art."

With charismatic stage presence, a versatile, soulful voice and a bold, inventive band, Haale cross-pollinates the musical traditions in her heritage with a decidedly modern moxie, following her own path and focusing on that Great Big Everything.

As Ostad Elahi wrote, "Truth, for every human being, consists in knowing who we are, where we have come from, what we must do, and where we should be going."

Clearly, Haale has found her truth.

Online: www.haale.com
Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Astute performances from future leaders: Volume of Our Voices puts humanity in the spotlight

On the wall behind my computer hangs a bulletin board that's layered with colorful flotsam and jetsam from the past few decades, including postcards from around the globe, a Scottish pound note, my Japanese I.D. card, a Zippy gem, photos of friends and sundry ticket stubs from concerts by The Who, The Stones, the Pretenders and Nada Surf.

In amongst this visual cacophony are buttons I've collected over the years, with slogans ranging from "ERA Yes" and "Iggy Pop Fan Club" to "Question Authority" and a cow thinking "No Nukes," along with a row of badges from SF AIDS Walks.

At the center of it all is a large, faded button that reads "Feminism Is Humanism."

Of everything tacked to my vertical scrapbook, this particular specimen holds the most meaning for me, perhaps because it's the first political anything I ever acquired, launching a lifetime of buttons, bumper stickers, activism and awareness.

I got it in 1978 when my dear friend Daphne and I went to our first N.O.W. rally, held on the Stanford campus across the street from our high school. I remember the intriguing phrase — "Feminism Is Humanism" — standing out from all the other buttons, T-shirts and signs, knowing that it captured my particular philosophy more accurately than anything else.

As readers here learned last year when I wrote about the Brattleboro Women's Film Festival, I'm not your average feminist. I'm the kind who thinks our collective might becomes far more abundant, effective and lasting when attained through more inclusive means, particularly when those means fit under the aegis of art.

Though it's often felt like swimming upstream, I still believe feminism is humanism and that we serve the greater good by welcoming everyone to the discussion, with no labels, monikers or categories that might risk dissuading potential supporters from becoming involved.

During this, the final weekend of Women's History Month, a group of diverse and multitalented students and faculty members at World Learning's SIT Graduate School in Brattleboro are sharing a stage in precisely that type of event.

On Friday and Saturday night, more than two dozen performers will express their views through song, movement and spoken word, in "Volume of Our Voices," an evening of creative expression on the topics of gender, identity and sexuality, benefiting the Women's Crisis Center in Brattleboro.

Original monologues, poems, dances, music and even martial arts will illustrate stories that are personal, if not intimate, yet universal in relevance to the larger human experience and the common societal messages that can misrepresent, misinform, isolate and stereotype different factions of society.

In speaking with a few of the students participating — all of whom are working toward master's degrees in SIT's renowned international education program — I was impressed by the breadth of their experiences and the unique challenges each will voice in their respective performances.

Jon Woods, an organization management candidate, will be exploring issues of race, belonging and disenfranchisement through poetry, song and the martial art known as Capoeira, a muscular type of competitive dance that originated in Angola and found larger cultural roots in Brazil centuries ago within the slave community.

Naming his piece, "If I Had Wings I Could Fly," after a line from the song "Regulate" by rappers Warren G. and Nate Dogg, Woods takes us on his journey from anguish to understanding with remarkable perspicuity and grace.

"The poem itself goes from despair, hopelessness and rage to being lost and then trying to find guidance as a black man," he explained. "It touches on the issue that in black culture there's a disconnection between parenthood and the next generation, a prevalence of no role models existing and having to look at historical references and not necessarily in your household, whether it's a book or music that you respond to."

Though Woods' personal and intellectual path has been paved by the work of legends such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and civil rights activist and scholar, W.E.B. Du Bois, he also absorbed profound life lessons much closer to home.

"I learned a lot from my father and his struggle in the corporate world," reflected Woods. "Being a black manager he had to deal with a lot of conflict, internal mainly, and the struggle to assimilate but also be himself."

"When I wrote my poem, I was having a really bad day," he confided. "I'm the only black man at SIT and that's fine because I'm used to white schools but sometimes I just want to talk to someone I can connect with on that.

"The way that Capoeira is incorporated is a release of energy; if you're angry sometimes the tension just needs to be released. It's a martial art that's powerful but you play it against yourself."

For Cole Kovac, who is working toward a master of art in teaching, an equally formidable frustration with society emerges in his monologue titled, "Pushing Boundaries: One Man's Reality," which challenges the widely accepted pejorative term that often pigeonholes people like him as having a "gender identity disorder."

As a person born female but who identifies male, Kovac investigates his own perspective from several compelling angles.

"The first part of the monologue is about the medical world's view of transgendered people," he explains. "The second half is about my story and feelings and struggles and why I'm on stage."

When I asked him about this latter question, he replied, "At this point I'm the only transgendered person on campus and I felt like my voice needed to be heard, especially since the performance isn't geared only towards women. And SIT is a very supportive community — it's a good place to be."

Conflict transformation major Rachel Unkovic possesses a similar wealth of wisdom, particularly having learned in her studies that peace-building is more productive than conflict management or resolution.

"It's the idea that conflict never goes away and that it can open the door to dialogue and new ideas," she asserted. "It can be changed from violence into something more productive."

In "Magic Mirror," which includes inventive vignettes such as "Sleeping Beau," Unkovic and classmates Scarlett Shaffer and Victoria Der use shadow puppets to retell classic fairy tales. "We explore old stories that we're all told growing up and the impact those messages have on kids. We're looking at the idea of gender roles and roles that you're forced to take."

That the show is a benefit for one of the region's most crucial social service organizations — providing shelter along with emotional, legal and crisis support for survivors of abuse — is all the more reason to come out and support these visionary young people who are working hard to create a future that is informed by expansive, global perspectives and a reverence for the power of the human spirit.

The Women's Crisis Center views these issues through a similarly humanistic lens, as evidenced in their thanks to SIT for donating proceeds from the show to their cause: "It takes a dynamic, unified force to address the war waged on the bodies of women and children every day in this community and all over the world. Women still live with the daily reality of physical and sexual violence, still live with the systems which protect them imperfectly, at best, and sometimes not at all. We both honor and rely on our allies in ending men's violence against women and children."

The unified force behind "Volume of Our Voices" exemplifies this inclusive approach to solving the global scourge of discrimination, disrespect and brutality. As Woods' commanding poem implores, "Let your voice be heard, preach the word, because no matter your gender or race, the struggle always continues."

Or, as Kovac puts it, with equal sagacity, "Our identities are always evolving."